In line with the commitments made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act of 2014 brought by the UPA-2 regime and the poll promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Seemandhraites, the NDA government announced several sops for Andhra Pradesh in its first budget.
The state stands separated from Telangana from June 2 and suffers the loss of Hyderabad, which served as the growth engine for the combined state. The Congress decision resulted in the electoral success of the TDP-BJP alliance here.
On Thursday, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced a plan for an industrial corridor between Visakhapatnam, a port city in northern Andhra, and Chennai, which is near the Andhra-Tamil Nadu border. The corridor running along the vast coastline of the state would have industrial clusters built alongside.
Kakinada port and its adjoining areas would be an economic growth centre, to be developed mainly as a hardware manufacturing hub. The Krishnapatnam port in the Chennai-Bengaluru industrial corridor region would be developed as a smart city.
On the education front, AP received an AIIMS-like institution, an IIT and an agriculture university in the budget. Andhra Pradesh also got a National Academy for Customs and Excise to come up at Hindupur in the Rayalaseema region.
{{/usCountry}}On the education front, AP received an AIIMS-like institution, an IIT and an agriculture university in the budget. Andhra Pradesh also got a National Academy for Customs and Excise to come up at Hindupur in the Rayalaseema region.
{{/usCountry}}AP chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, whose TDP is a constituent of the NDA, expressed satisfaction over the allocations but said "more should come the state's way to rescue it from the deficit suffered on various fronts due to the previous Congress government's mismanagement of revenues and the state's division."
Naidu's counterpart in Telangana K Chandrasekhara Rao, at loggerheads with the Modi government over Polavaram multi-purpose irrigation project, jurisdiction over Hyderabad and other issues, expressed disappointment at the allocations for his new state. He said the budget gave the state only what was already promised in the act. Jaitley announced only a horticulture university for Telangana.