Visakhapatnam: Andhra Pradesh BJP leaders, unable yet to give a proper shape to the party, are pinning high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here on Friday and Saturday.
Rajya Sabha member G.V.L. Narasimha Rao told the media here on Wednesday, “It will be a take off for the BJP in Andhra Pradesh. All the projects up for launch by the PM are central government initiatives and the state had not invested its funds.
“The state government will be a spectator to this grand event,’’ Rao said.
“When I met the PM two months ago and invited him to Andhra Pradesh, he accepted the party’s request and scheduled his programme here,” he said.
Asked why the Railway Zone was not included in the foundation stone list for the PM event, Rao said the government was committed to the plan for a separate railway zone. Proposals like inauguration of the HPCL expansion, the ESI hospital and the Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital were deleted from the list as work on these projects were still on, he said.
Rao said, the PM will dedicate to the nation the rehabilitation and upgradation of National Highway 326A from Narasannapeta to Pathapatnam (excluding two roads over bridges and its approaches) to two-lane with paved shoulder as part of the Srikakulam-Gajapati corridor.
This project was estimated to cost `211 crore. The second project is the ONGC-U field monetization of KG-DWN-98/2 deepwater block. Modi will also dedicate to the nation the grass-root IOCL POL depot at Guntakal that cost `385 crore and doubling and electrification of the Vijayawada-Gudivada-Bhimavaram-Nidadavolu, Gudivada-Machilipatnam and Bhimavaram-Narasapuram (221km) tracks that cost `4,106.
“The total cost for these works is `15,233 crore,” Rao said.
The PM will also lay the foundation stone for the modernization and up-gradation of the Visakhapatnam Fishing Harbour at an estimated cost of `152 crore, the six-lane green field Raipur-Visakhapatnam economic corridor of National Highway 130CD worth`3,778 crore, improvement to the six-lane road and additional four-lane dedicated port road for the Visakhapatnam Port connectivity road from Convent Junction to Sheela Nagar Junction in Visakhapatnam on National Highway 516C worth`566 crore, the redevelopment and modernization of Visakhapatnam Railway Station worth `460 crore and the 745km long Srikakulam Angul (Odisha) natural gas pipeline costing `2,658 crore.
