Special Status fight by the people, NGOs, politicians of various parties in the bifurcated state of Andhra Pradesh may be of no use after so many years. The rumours of Union Government headed by PM Modi decided to do away with special status to states and allocate special package to Andhra Pradesh to prevent other states coming with similar demands turned true when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced Wednesday night that special package for AP will be announced on Thursday.
Discussion of special status and special package continued ever since TDP-BJP combine came to power in state and centre. With the delay in according special status, tensions increased as Jagan Mohan Reddy of YSRCP and Power Star Pawan kalyan of Jana Sena decided to intensify protests along with the Congress party.
Various Union Ministers coming with contradictory statements on special status didnot help the matter putting Chandra Babu in difficult situation. Finally when Pawan Kalyan announced that he will start fight for special status in a three phase manner starting with huge rally on Sep 9th in Kakinada, forced Centre to reconsider its decision.
Group of minister met over the last few days and finally Arun Jaitley announced special package. This followed series of meetings with Union minister for science and technology YS Choudhary with Jaitley and Union minister for urban development M Venkaiah Naidu. AP chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu met with his cabinet colleagues in Vijayawada twice to take stock of the developments in Delhi. Venkaiah Naidu called up the AP CM twice to apprise him of the special package.
Chandra Babu relented after much resistance objecting to the usage of words like “shall be, will be, will look into“ The draft was sent to Chandra Babu through mail and Chandra Babu after going thorugh in detail was then forwared to PM's office for final approval.
Arun Jaitley who was supposed to announce package at 6.20 PM, delayed it and finally package was announced at 11PM. Jaitley said “States that have been granted special category status are getting 30 per cent more funds from the Centre compared to other states. This gap will be bridged for AP through this package,“
