Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday requested the Centre to release ₹ 2,500 crore towards arrears to be paid to the state under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme.
Jagan, who had gone to Delhi on Wednesday evening, called on Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday and submitted a representation seeking release of pending arrears to the state.
Besides ₹ 2,500 crore towards MGNREGA arrears, the chief minister also appealed to the Union finance minister to increase the borrowing limit of the state, which was pruned down by the Centre in the past.
He said during 2021-22, the Centre had reduced the credit limit of the state from ₹ 42,472 crore to ₹ 17,923 crore for no fault of the state government. He requested that the Centre allow the state to go in for additional borrowing this year to compensate for the shortfall in 2021-22.
Jagan also asked the Union finance minister to ensure that the Telangana government clear ₹ 7,058 crore outstanding from the Telangana power distribution companies to be paid to Andhra Pradesh power generation corporation (APGenco) for the power supplied between 2014 and 2017.
The chief minister also urged Sitharaman to sanction ₹ 10,000 crore immediately on ad-hoc basis to expedite the construction of the Polavaram major irrigation project on the Godavari, besides another ₹2020 crore to fill the scourge pits formed at the main dam site due to the washing away of diaphragm wall in the flash floods.
He pointed out that Andhra Pradesh had so far spent ₹ 2,600.74 crore on Polavaram project from its own exchequer and sought the reimbursement of the same from the Central funds. He requested that the Centre accept the Technical Advisory Committee’s revised estimates of ₹ 55,548 crore on Polavaram Project.
Earlier on Wednesday night, the chief minister called on the Union home minister Amit Shah and urged him to expedite several issues which remained unresolved even nine years after the unscientific bifurcation, pushing the residual Andhra Pradesh backwards in terms of development and revenue.
