The Hindu : YSR flays TDP campaign

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 29, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

YSR flays TDP campaign

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, MARCH 28. The Congress has hit out at the TDP for its campaign against its promise of providing free power arguing that it was a well-conceived programme intended to benefit large sections of farmers in the upland areas.

In a statement, the former CLP leader, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, said the anti-farmer mindset of the TDP leadership would not allow it to understand the rationality behind the promise. The TDP's claim that the promise of free power was not believable because it was not being implemented in other States, was at best outlandish, he said.

Dr. Reddy said identical and uniform policies were not possible because each State was endowed with diverse natural resources and any Government was to have its own priorities. Andhra Pradesh, he said, had an ideal mix of hydro and thermal power generation and it was also endowed with the two cheapest natural sources of coal and natural gas.

The Congress leader said the annual consumption of power by the farm sector was 10 billion units, which could be easily met out of the hydropower being generated in the State at a cost of 25 paise, and it would not entail any subsidy more than Rs.300 crores. He ridiculed the TDP claim that it would not be feasible to supply free power pointing out to the accounts of discoms that power supply to agriculture would not exceed Rs. 250 crores.

He credited the Congress with the development of the State referring to projects like Nagarjunasagar, Srisailam, Balimela, Sriramsagar and Sileru and said that the ruling TDP had completely failed in preserving the benefits.

Farmers in the State had suffered heavily due to eroded viability levels during the last eight years as the Government had completely ignored the sector, he said. The agricultural GSDP had fallen from Rs.13, 305 crores to Rs.11,958 crores between 1994 and 2003, he said quoting NABARD figures to disprove the TDP argument.

Referring to the TDP demand for national consensus on issues like free power, Dr. Reddy sought to know whether the party ever bothered to seek a consensus on schemes like Rs. 2 a kg rice, prohibition, Adarana, Deepam and Roshni before introducing them only to scrap those later.

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Andhra Pradesh