AP Speaker claims Shri Bagh Pact also mooted decentralisation

SRIKAKULAM: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly Speaker Tammineni Sitaram on Sunday emphasised the importance of the decentralisation of development and stated that many states were on the path of development and progress through measures like decentralization of development and capital decentralisation. At a media conference held at the guest house of the Roads and Buildings Department in Srikakulam on Sunday, he cited a few examples where states like Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh were implementing decentralisation.

The Speaker asserted that statehood movements were emerging because the development was focused on one place. He recalled that decentralisation was also proposed in the Shri Bagh Pact during the bifurcation of Madras and Andhra states where proposals were made to establish the capital in Kurnool, the High Court in Guntur and the Andhra University in Visakhapatnam.

He said that the Sivaramakrishnan Committee, which was formed post bifurcation of the state in 2014, also made several proposals to pre-empt the likelihood of separate statehood movements in future and suggested that capital should be established to develop all regions equally.

Lashing out at Chandrababu Naidu for hurriedly announcing Amaravati as capital overnight despite having Hyderabad as the common capital for 10 years, Sitaram said that capital construction should not be undertaken in Amaravati spending lakhs of crores of rupees. "The then TDP government should have declared Visakhapatnam as the capital as there are vast resources," he said, adding that the people of Andhra had played a key role for several decades in developing Hyderabad as a metropolitan city.

He said that the Telangana separate state movement started due to the lack of development in the state which was centered around only Hyderabad. "Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy recognised the same problem and brought the issue of decentralisation to the fore," he said. Sitaram said that the development of 29 villages was not the real development of Andhra Pradesh and made clear that the establishment of three capitals was the best solution for the parallel development of 26 districts.

Taking a dig at Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan, Tammineni Sitaram said that every political party had specific goals and policies to gain support from the public but the former had no such characteristics. He said that it was not appropriate for the Jana Sena chief to create confusion. He said that it was also right for Pawan Kalyan to make filthy comments to whip up emotions. He said that Pawan Kalyan was doing part-time politics to benefit the Telugu Desam Party. "As long as CM Jagan Mohan Reddy has the support of the people, nobody can harm YSRCP," he added.