VIJAYAWADA: Will the city get Rs. 50 crores from the Union Government every year for five years? No person holding a public office is ready to vouch for this. But, if the words of the city Congress president, Pyla Sominaidu, have to be believed, the city will get a whopping Rs. 250 crores in the next five years only for development.

In his maiden press conference here on Saturday after assuming charge as city president of the Congress party last month, Mr. Sominaidu surprised everybody by talking about the various development activities in the pipeline for the city. Even if it were to be construed as an effort by a senior party functionary to publicise the steps being taken by the Government for the development of the city, most schemes, he talked about, had no mention anywhere, nor has there been any evidence of any office making proposals to that effect.

The two works, which have been at proposal level for quite sometime, he mentioned were the widening of Bandar Road and construction of a flyover at Nainavaram Gate. The clarity with which Mr. Sominaidu spelt out the amounts earmarked for the two projects astonished even the Congressmen. He said Rs. 15 crores would be spent on the construction of the flyover at Nainavaram Gate. Interestingly, the South Central Railway (SCR) has come forward to release Rs. 17.61 crores, only if the Vijayawada, Guntur, Tenali and Mangalagiri-Urban Development Authority (VGTM-UDA) releases Rs. 20 crores for the completion of the project. Mr. Sominaidu announced that Rs. 6.5 crores would be spent on the widening of Bandar Road (Mahatma Gandhi Road). Whether the district Collector and special officer of the VMC, Naveen Mittal, also knows if this much amount is earmarked for the project is a big question. For, Mr. Mittal, in his capacity as the special officer of the VMC, ruled only on Saturday that no road should be dug for next three months.

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