Leaders of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Sunday filed a police complaint against the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), alleging that the US-based consultancy firm had resorted to 'cheating' in its report submitted to the Andhra Pradesh government.
The BCG had filed a report titled ‘Strengthening Andhra Pradesh through balanced and inclusive growth’ earlier this month, which was in line with the YSRCP government’s proposal for decentralising the state’s capital. The proposal has been met with protests from farmers and others, in and around the Amaravati capital region.
Senior TDP leaders Varla Ramaiah and Ganji Chiranjeevi approached the Mangalagiri rural police to lodge their complaint against BCG.
The TDP alleged that the BCG quoted a report by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and said that soil tests which were conducted in Amaravati, found the area unsuitable for construction.
Speaking to reporters outside the police station, Varla Ramaiah said, "When IIT Madras was contacted and asked if they conducted any research on Amaravati and submitted a report to BCG, a professor from IIT Madras replied stating that they had not conducted any such survey."
"The BCG has given a fake report, based on which the government is shifting the capital," he added, pointing out that this amounted to cheating under the IPC.
A special session of Andhra Pradesh Assembly on Monday is expected to seal the fate of Amaravati as the state capital. The session is likely to pass a resolution for decentralisation of the state capital by shifting some key capital functions from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam and Kurnool.
The YSRCP government proposes to shift the state Secretariat and the Chief Minister's office to Visakhapatnam and the High Court to Kurnool.
Ignoring the protest by the opposition parties and the farmers, who had given 33,000 acres of land for development of Amaravati as the state capital in 2015, the Jagan Mohan Reddy government is going ahead with the proposal.
The main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has called for 'chalo Assembly' to oppose any move to shift the state capital.
The TDP Legislature Party on Sunday held a meeting to chalk out its strategy during the session. Leader of Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu discussed the strategy with the party MLAs.
Amaravati was the brainchild of Naidu, who lost power to the YSRCP in May last year. The new government alleged that Naidu and other TDP leaders had resorted to insider trading in development of Amaravati and the whole project was designed to benefit a particular caste.
IANS inputs