Taking umbrage at the Central government’s affidavit in Supreme Court stating that setting up of a steel factory at Bayyaram was not ‘feasible’, the CPI (ML-New Democracy) has slammed the BJP dispensation at the Centre for allegedly dishonouring the ‘commitment’ made in this regard in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.
In a statement, party State assistant secretary Potu Ranga Rao alleged that the Centre had adopted dilatory tactics in the name of field visits by expert committees to Bayyaram in the past four years.
The Centre had betrayed the faith of people of Telangana by going back on its bounden duty to implement a commitment made in this regard in the State Reorganisation Act, he charged. He alleged the TRS government has miserably failed to exert pressure on the Centre set up an integrated steel plant at the mineral rich Bayyaram, now in Mahabubabad district. “The Centre’s statement outrightly turning down the proposal to establish the steel factory at Bayyaram has shattered the hopes of hundreds of local unemployed tribal youths,” he said.
Meanwhile, a group of Youth Congress activists burnt the effigy of the Central government at Pavilion Grounds here in protest against its affidavit reportedly expressing its inability to set up the steel factory.
The demonstrators raised slogans against the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre.
They alleged that the Centre dampened the hopes of people of the erstwhile undivided Khammam district by virtually shelving the long pending plan to set up a steel plant at Bayyaram.