No mention of SCS for Andhra Pradesh in Union Budget

AMARAVATI: AP’s daughter-in-law and Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has not allocated funds to any of the key projects in the state when she presented the budget on Friday.
Sitharaman made no mention about AP’s demand for Special Category Status (SCS) in the budget speech. Chief minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy had reminded the Centre of the SCS promise during his two meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the last one month.

The budget has no proposal for fund allocation to Amaravati. “It is a disappointing budget. AP got nothing from the Centre,” said YSR Congress Rajya Sabha MP V Vijayasai Reddy in New Delhi.
The state government had expected the Centre to be benevolent after Prime Minister Narendra Modi received chief minister YS Jaganmohan warmly during their first meeting after the elections.
Jagan met Modi along with a delegation of MPs and chief secretary before he was sworn in as the CM and submitted a wish list. PM had promised to extend his support to the state government.
With YSRC emerging a force on the national political stage with 22 MPs, many thought NDA would honour its commitments to the state. The Centre continues to ignore AP’s demands and requirements as it had not granted any special fund to crucial projects in the state.
The central institutions such as IIT, IIM, IISER and NIT also got nothing from the Centre. The Centre granted 11 higher educational institutions to the state in the State Reorganization Act. It was estimated that at least Rs 12,446 crore would require to complete these projects.
But the Centre had allotted around Rs 746 crore till 2018-19 and almost nothing in the 2019-20 budget. Sitharaman has granted Rs 13 crore for the Central University in Anantapur while the upcoming Tribal University in Vizianagaram district got Rs 8 crore.
The proposed Metro train projects for Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam, too, were ignored by the Centre.
“We are disappointed. The Centre had not fulfilled any of its promises,” said P Mithun Reddy, YSRC floor leader in the Lok Sabha. He said they would continue to fight to get additional funds during the discussion on the budget in the coming days.
Modi had promised to give financial support for the new capital city to when he visited the state to lay the foundation stone Amaravati project four years ago. The Centre released Rs 2,500 crore for the capital city during Modi’s first tenure as the PM. The Centre kept dodging release of next spell of funds citing non-submission of utilization reports by the TDP government.
The Centre had allotted Rs 1,000 crore to take up underground drainage and stormwater drainage projects in Guntur and Vijayawada by showing them as part of the capital city.