BJP, YSRC at loggerheads over PM Modi's trip to Vizag

The BJP and the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh are at loggerheads over the scheduled visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the port city Visakhapatnam on November 11 and 12 with both parties vying to own it.

The YSRC leadership is ostensibly seeking to use the Prime Minister's trip to Vizag to showcase the "close bond" Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy enjoys with Modi, at a time when the principal opposition Telugu Desam is trying to re-align with its old friend BJP.

The Prime Minister will land in Visakhapatnam on the night of November 11 and take part in a series of programmes the next day, though there is no official confirmation yet of the exact events. The YSRC claimed the Prime Minister's visit "is totally a government event" but the BJP disputed it.

"If it is a government event, why is an MP of the ruling party announcing it? Where is the need for him to announce that lakhs of people will attend Prime Minister's public meeting? He should stop the dramas," BJP state president Somu Veerraju said, hitting out at YSRC MP V Vijayasai Reddy.

"Many people are talking different things, but the Prime Minister's two-day visit is an official programme. The Prime Minister will address a public meeting on November 12 apart from taking part in seven other programmes," Vijayasai Reddy said in an apparent rebuttal.

It was BJP MP G V L Narasimha Rao who had, in August, requested Modi to visit Visakhapatnam "at his early convenience" to launch several prestigious development and infrastructure projects of the Central government. Among those proposed were the inauguration of the Rs 26,000 crore expansion and modernisation of HPCL's petroleum refinery, first phase of the new green campus of the Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam and a cruise terminal at the Visakhapatnam Port.

The Prime Minister is expected to lay the foundation stone for the redevelopment of the Visakhapatnam Railway Station, being taken up at a cost of Rs 400 crore, construction of a 400-bedded speciality ESI Hospital (Rs 385 crore) and modern mega fishing harbour. Though there is anticipation, no confirmation has been received on whether or not the Prime Minister will lay the foundation stone for the new South Coastal Railway Zone, one of the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 that hasn't yet been fulfilled.

On November 12, Modi will address public meeting at the Andhra University Engineering College grounds. While the BJP is making its own arrangements for mobilising crowd for the meeting, the YSRC said "not less than two lakh people" will come and listen to the address of the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister. The YSRC has directed its local leaders in Visakhapatnam and neighbouring Vizianagaram and Srikakulam also to bring in people from those districts.