‘A stare from me can stop padayatra,’ says Botsa

Vishakapatnam: Blaming Opposition leader Chandrababu Naidu and realtors for the second round of protests by the Amaravati farmers, education minister Botsa Satyanarayana said, “If I stare at them, the padayatra will stop in five minutes, but we are soft and law-abiding”.
 
The minister was speaking at a round-table meet in support of decentralisation organised in Visakhapatnam on Sunday in the presence of MLAs, MPs and people from different walks of life.

He said chief minister Jagan Reddy, who conceived the idea of three capitals and state decentralization, was not against the 29 villages. “He is rather interested in the welfare of all the 26 districts for an all-round development.”

“Unlike Chandrababu Naidu who took unilateral decisions on selection of the capital, Jagan consulted several eminent individuals and stakeholders before announcing the three-capital concept,” he said.

He said that soon after coming to power, Jagan Reddy visited Amaravati with experts and got to know that a full- fledged greenfield capital could cost the state over `1 lakh crore. This was 300 times more than the amount required to make a developed city like Visakhapatnam the administrative capital.

“If we spent `10,000 crore, Vizag will be a better city than Mumbai,’’ Botsa said.

He admitted that the Amaravati farmers gave their land for the capital. But Chandrababu Naidu never gave them in writing that the land would be the capital of the state. “What would the Amaravati farmers lose if three capitals were formed?”
 
“We have lost a lot and we are not ready to lose more. It is time people of north Andhra raised their voice and demanded their due,’’ the minister told the gathering.

The minister suggested that local elected representatives form a committee and campaign in the streets in favour of the three-capitals plan.

Industries minister Gudivada Amarnath said “a padayatra with a political agenda does not augur well.” The local people have been watching the developments and understood that Chandrababu was planning to destroy the peace in north-coastal Andhra by organising this padayatra, he said.

Historian and former Andhra University professor K Suryanarayana said Visakhapatnam has 1,000 years’ history when traders from Sri Lanka and Indonesia visited it and traded with the local merchants. He quoted several examples on how greenfield capitals never succeeded.