Special Category Status is not a settled issue: Left parties

Ongole: The speakers announced that they would not stop the agitation until the demands are met, at a meeting held by Left parties demanding special category status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh and fulfilling the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act.

At a meeting held at Kapu Kalyana Mandapam in Ongole on Tuesday, the chairman of the Committee to achieve SCS and promises made in AP Reorganisation Act, Chalasani Srinivasa Rao condemned sympathy shown by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Andhra Pradesh and demanded the PM to supply oxygen to save the State that is in ICU for years. He said the SCS is not for a person or for a party, but it is the self-respect slogan of the 5.5 crore people in the State.

He called the public to question the leaders from parties, who cheated on the State by grabbing their collars and becoming a part of the agitation. He questioned the rationale in allocating Rs 19,300 crore to Gujarat in the railway budget and in allocating just Rs 1 lakh crore to the bullet train project Andhra Pradesh. He advised Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan to come out of the trap by the BJP and fight for the benefits of the State.

CPM AP secretary V Srinivasa Rao said that the BJP leaders, who betrayed the State, are propagating that SCS is a settled issue, while other parties YSRCP and TDP also giving chorus to their claim. He announced that SCS is a history in making, and the left parties would take up the agitation as a public agenda.

CPI AP secretary K Ramakrishna said that the BJP is not fulfilling the promises made to the State in the parliament itself. He said BJP is not ready to even discuss the special category status issue and that is why it has removed it from the agenda of a meeting recently. He opined that Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy is ruling the State as the agent of Amit Shah, Adani and Ambani, that is why the YSRCP was not questioning the Union government on SCS.

He advised Chandrababu Naidu, Jagan Mohan Reddy and Pawan Kalyan to stop politics for existence, and join hands in the agitation for SCS and fulfilment of the promises made in the reorganisation bill. He condemned that the union government was trying to sell Vizag Steel Plant, even though it didn't support anything for the State. The communist leaders opined that Pawan Kalyan was trying to sit in the CM chair by pleading support from BJP. They questioned how he could run a political party by asking for the route map to function from another political party. They advised Pawan Kalyan to join BJP directly and asked his party cadre to choose their future carefully.

CPI district secretary ML Narayana, CPM East Prakasam district secretary Punati Anjaneyulu, CPI-ML New Democracy secretary Chittipati Venkateswarlu, and SCS agitation leaders GVS Raju, Alahari Venkateswara Rao, T Gopala Reddy and others attended the meeting.