The other day, TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu had addressed a press conference, where he found fault with the two reports received by the government on the state development, with focus on capital distribution.
In a hurry to blame the government, he said that consultants are paid and they give report as desired by the government. This statement of Naidu proved that all the reports that he had secured from various sources in the last five years, and all the consultants that he had engaged and paid heavily are fake and they were all prepared as per his own desire.
That was unfortunate, because the AP government had paid several crore of rupees to various consultants and consultant companies on various issues including architectural designs for the capital from Norman and Fosters.
The other issue was that Chandrababu Naidu lied was that the capital location was fixed in the present place (Amaravati) as suggested by the Sivaramakrishnan committee.
Sivaramakrishnan, as chairman of the committee and none of the members, who were all experts in various fields including urbanisation and environment, have strongly opposed the capital location between Vijayawada and Guntur. They said Vijayawada-Guntur as region and not as cities, are not advised to locate the capital because of the soil that has multi-crops.
Sivaramakrishnan committee had only mentioned Vijayawada, on the positive note, only in terms of air, road and rail connectivity and also geographical location to the south (Rayalaseema) and the north (Uttarandhra). It did not recommend this place for the capital as some of the terms of reference for the committee was to ensure:
1) Minimum damage/loss to agriculture,
2) Maximum utilisation of government lands, that too non-agriculture lands,
3) Minimum dislocation of people (habitations) and
4) Minimum expenditure for the government buildings.
The Sivaramakrishanan committee also did not favour massive architectural heavens (huge buildings) as the residuary state had revenue deficit and heavy load of debt.
But, Chandrababu Naidu went against these advises and destroyed the multi-crop agriculture lands and had planned iconic buildings and bridges.
He promised the buildings as special attraction for tourists and heaven for the farmers who have given their lands.
He failed in both – neither he fulfilled what he had promised to the farmers, nor he built any iconic tower. But, he did nothing to fill the revenue deficit and increased the debt load to Rs 2.25 lakh crore.
With failures over his head and feeling uncomfortable to sit out of power in his last days, Chandrababu Naidu had twisted Sivaramakrishnan committee report too in his favour. Thus, he continued his life built on the ladder of lies over the years.