BJP’s wishlist to PM mimics TD’s

It is not the Telugu Desam and the YSR Congress who seem to be getting the political jitters in Andhra Pradesh. The BJP, too, is getting anxious ahead of the poll season, going by the list of demands put forward by AP BJP chief Kanna Lakshmi Narayana to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a meeting in the capital on June 11.

The newly-appointed AP BJP president, a former Congressman, met Mr Modi and submitted a list of 12 demands for the state, which included approval of projects like Vizag Railway Zone, Kadapa Steel Factory, Girijan University, Metro for Visakhapatnam and Vijaywada and special industrial corridor for four Rayalseema districts.

Significantly, all these 12 demands were included in the 19 demands put forward by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu before he quit the NDA earlier this year.

A perusal of the letters submitted by both shows that the only major demands, which were not covered by the BJP state president, were the ones pertaining to a demand for special status and the Polavaram project.

It might be recalled BJP president Amit Shah had written a nine-page reply to the TD supremo’s dec-ision to exit the NDA with the theme that majority of the demands of the Andhra Pradesh state government had been fulfilled.

The letter written by Mr Shah had said: “This decision (to quit NDA) is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns.”

Mr Shah’s letter goes on to say: “Already most of the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act are poised towards fulfilment.”

AP BJP chief Lakshmi Narayana was appointed just a day after Karnataka went to polls. It was being speculated earlier that he would join the YSRC.