After the Andhra Pradesh high court declared that there was no insider trading and irregularities in land pooling by the AP Capital Region Development Authority for the construction of the state capital, which was later endorsed by the Supreme Court, the Amaravati land scam continues to haunt Telugu Desam Party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
Even as the political atmosphere in the state heated up following the arrest of senior TDP leader and former minster Ponguru Narayana on Tuesday, the Andhra police dealt yet another shock on the TDP by fixing the party president in the alleged irregularities in designing of the inner ring road around Amaravati.
Following a complaint lodged by YSRC leader and Mangalagiri MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy on April 27 and submission of a preliminary inquiry report on May 9, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) police registered a criminal case against Chandrababu Naidu and 13 others in the case.
The other accused in the case included: Naidu, in the capacity of APCRDA chairman, Ponguru Narayana, industrialist Lingamaneni Ramesh, his companies, Heritage Foods Ltd etc.
The FIR said certain illegal and corrupt activities were committed by highly placed government officials in the government between 2014 to 2019 with regard to designing of the master plan for the AP Capital and the Capital City and alignment of the inner Ring Road and its connected arterial roads.
The FIR said it caused wrongful gain to certain chosen persons and entities connected to the decision making authorities derived maximum pecuniary benefits and causing corresponding wrongful loss to the general public and the public exchequer thus amount to cheating.
Cases were filed under various sections including criminal conspiracy and cheating. It remains to be seen how serious the case is taken by the government.