Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday slammed the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for junking Amaravati as the Andhra Pradesh capital, and described its report pitching for Visakhapatnam as the seat of power, as 'waste paper'.
Naidu, who during the previous TDP rule proclaimed that he was building a greenfield city of Amaravati as the capital of divided Andhra Pradesh, had made it his pet project.
Blasting the report submitted by the international consultancy firm Boston Consulting Group on the Andhra Pradeshs capital, the TDP leader told a press conference in Amaravati that it was nothing but a waste of paper.
"The so-called report of BCG is a bundle of lies. If not a waste paper, what is it?" he asked, alleging the consultancy firm had no credibility.
Naidu wondered if there was any state in the country where the executive and the legislature were located at different places, referring to one of the recommendations made by BCG that APs Secretariat could be located in Visakhapatnam and the legislature in Amaravati.
He angrily asked if the government wanted to kill Amaravati that was planned to be an economic hub, which could potentially create several lakh jobs and generate wealth for the state.
"Amaravati is not a greenfield city. It is a greenfield-cum-brownfield city. On one side, there is Vijayawada, on the other there are Tadepalli, Mangalagiri, Tenali and Guntur. We wanted to develop it that way. What we envisaged was a capital that would give an imaginative career for the children. The capital should be a place that will give the children an imaginative career, an imaginative future -- the future they want," the former Chief Minister said.
The BCG, hired to suggest a BIG (balance, inclusive growth) strategy for Andhra Pradesh, made the recommendations which reflected Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy's pitch for three different capitals.
In his speech in the state Assembly on December 17, Jagan had suggested that the Secretariat be located in Visakhapatnam, the Legislature in Amaravati and the High Court in Kurnool.
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