To highlight the issue of Special Category Status (SCS) for Andhra Pradesh, the YSRCP said that it would hold a ‘Vanchana pai Garjana’ at Guntur on August 9.

Speaking to reporters in Hyderabad on Thursday, senior party leader and MLC Ummareddy Venkateswarlu said, “The agitation is to show to the people, how Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu after being silent for four years, has suddenly taken a U-turn and has been voicing the SCS demand, which lacks sincerity. Our leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy has been at the forefront of the agitation on various fronts for the past four years.”

“We have taken up the SCS agitation for the past four years across the state and also the national capital while Naidu had always tried to foil our protests and had even passed derogatory remarks on the issue and made light of the situation. Now as the demand is a top priority in the minds of the people, he is trying to hijack it and cheat them,” he added.

The YSRCP leader also pointed out that Naidu had himself said earlier that a ‘special package’ would suffice.

“Even when we have called for a bandh recently on the failure of central and state governments in implementing the issues mentioned during the state’s bifurcation, the TDP government had tried its best to foil the bandh which shows its intent,” Venkateswarlu said.

These acts of ‘treachery’ would be questioned during the ‘Vanchana pai Garjana,’ he said.

‘Special category status’ is a classification given by the Centre to assist in development of those states that face geographical and socio-economic disadvantages like hilly terrains, strategic international borders, tribal population, economic and infrastructural backwardness and non-viable state finances.

Last month, the Centre reiterated that it could not grant SCS to Andhra Pradesh in a counter affidavit filed in the Supreme Court and claimed that all commitments under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, had been addressed.