YSR Congress party on Tuesday accused Andhra Pradesh assembly speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao of conducting himself like a Telugu Desam Party worker, rather than being an apolitical head of an august assembly.
Speaking to media, party senior leader and spokesman Ambati Rambabu found fault with the Speaker worshipping the photo of chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
He was referring to a recent incident of the TDP leaders doing milk bath to the portrait of Naidu in the presence of the Speaker.
“He is behaving like a TDP worker and bringing down the dignity of the Chair. While many issues were pending with him has openly joined the praise bandwagon of Chief Minister which does not go well with the high post he is holding,” Ambati said.
He pooh-poohed the tall claims being made by the AP government on Amaravati bonds.
“The state has been patting its own back and trying hard through its friendly media to project the loan raising through exorbitant rate of interest and high commission rates for the Amaravathi Bonds which in fact is nothing but passing down the debt burden to the future generations,” he said.
Ambati pointed out that the interest of over 10.32 % was very high for bonds and commission paid to the agents to raise the loan through bonds for Rs 2,000 crores is many notches above the acceptable norms.
“Despite all the shortcomings, Chandrababu has been trying to project that the bonds were subscribed on his personal image which is a blatant lie as the market tends to go by the rate of interest on offer,” he said.
While on one side the debt is mounting, on the other side the extravaganza and the spendthrift nature of the government has been on the fore in the form of very frequent foreign tours, construction and renovation of numerous buildings for inflated costs, and encouraging contractors by approving their tenders which are many times more than the normal market value for kickbacks. All this put together gets into the accumulated debt and revenue deficit, he said.