Alert: CM Jagan’s Vizag Tour

Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s tours are sending jitters down the spine of the public and overloading the officials with extra work. His visits are wrought with inconvenience to the public, destruction of green cover and expenditure of a huge amount of public money, say the opposition leaders.

Jagan is scheduled to visit Vizag, proposed to be the executive capital of Andhra Pradesh, on Thursday to unveil the statue of his father and former CM late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy at the ACA-VDCA stadium. He would reach the venue in a chopper from the airport. However, six huge trees right beside the compound wall of the stadium were felled for security reasons.

The CM’s frequent visits to Vizag are putting commuters and even traders to inconvenience as they are being forced to get stuck in traffic and close down their businesses respectively. In the name of establishing the executive capital and also shifting his family to Vizag, Jagan had been frequently landing in Vizag for the last few months.

Significantly, a new helipad was prepared at the stadium even while there was one at the Rushikonda Hill, just 3 km away from the venue. Further, a road was also laid from the A-ground to the B-ground in the stadium just for the sake of the CM to enable him walk through the path to unveil the statue, after addressing the party workers in A-ground.

The road divider in front of the stadium was also removed for the convenience of the CM’s convoy, even when there is a junction just few metres away from where the vehicles can take a U-turn. Construction of the divider again would cost a few lakhs of rupees. On one hand, the CM is taking huge amount of loan and on the other, spending the same without any control, pointed out a Jana Sena leader in Vizag.

The CM is scheduled to travel to Apollo Hospital in Arilova from the stadium and then to RK Beach, on road. All the kiosks and business establishments, even which were on the service road en route, were directed to close down. Small businesses at the PM Palem law college junction, Endada Junction, Zoo Park were forced to shut shop on Thursday. The officials pressed in bulldozers and removed some kiosks on the road without any prior information.

Vizagites are fearing that their condition would be much worse if the CM really began operating from the city in the future.