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As part of his five day visit to Singapore, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday, July 27, invited Singapore based global urban infrastructure company Surbana Jurong to invest in large-scale housing construction projects in the state and invited them to be a part of the ‘Housing for All’ initiative.
The Chief Minister told representatives from Surbana Jurong that Andhra is focusing on infrastructure development projects and discussed the state’s position as a logistics hub.
Notably, Surbana Jurong is one of the companies named in the Amaravati Inner Ring Road (IRR) scam, in which Chandrababu was named as an accused. The Amaravati Inner Ring Road (IRR) scam was investigated by the AP Crime Investigation Department (AP CID) under the former YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) led state government.
The CID argued that the master plan for Amaravati and the Inner Ring Road was altered to benefit Heritage Foods, run by Chandrababu’s wife Nara Bhuvaeshwari, the Narayana Educational institutes run by Andhra Urban development minister P Narayana as well as the Lingamaneni group, run by L Ramesh, known to be a close associate of Chandrababu Naidu.
Why was Chandrababu accused of granting Surbana Jurong an unfair advantage?
As per a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) ratified in April 2014 (when the TDP was in power), Surbana Jurong was roped in to design the master plan for Amaravati. Chandrababu and P Narayana were accused of awarding the initial table designs for the capital’s master plan on a nomination basis as against the legally accepted tendering process.
CID officials alleged that the companies were closely guided by the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) in designing the master plan to benefit Naidu, Narayana and Lingamaneni. While the awarding of contracts had to undergo a bidding process, the TDP government went against it and nominated the Singapore companies.
The argument made by the TDP government was that they had to return the reconstituted land that was procured under pooling by 2018. With the deadline in mind, the state argued that Singapore company Surbana Jurong’s expertise in urban design was ideal as they could carry out their thought to the detailed level without distortion.
In its Compliance Audit Report for March 2021, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said that while the APCRDA argued that they were empowered to sanction works and investments, this wasn’t the case. “..APCRDA Act does not absolve the authority to obviate compliance to existing rules of tendering procedure,” it had noted.
Also Read: How Chandrababu Naidu’s Singapore vision for Amaravati has got him in a legal tangle