Naidu govt paid Rs 6 lakh to catch a rat: Jagan govt

The cabinet sub-committee set up by the new Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy will submit its preliminary report on various corrupt practices of Nara Chandrababu Naidu government within 45 days. The sub-committee along with major issues such as irrigation will also look into the huge amounts of money spent on Godavari Pushkar, water packets, catching of rats and eradication of mosquitoes.

“There are cases where the Naidu’s government paid Rs 6 lakh to catch a rat, money was splurged in the name of eradication of mosquitoes,” said state finance minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy speaking to media after meeting the chief minister at his Tadepalli residence here on Sunday. However, he made it clear that the committee was constituted targeting Naidu. “The effort is to identify the loopholes and creating systems to avoid such wastages in the future,” he said.

The ministers that attended the first ever meeting with the chief minister have said that Jaganmohan Reddy wanted them to look into corruption in Polavaram, Veligonda, and Vamsadhara project works. The committee will also look into all previous power purchase agreements by Naidu government which said to have cost the exchequer an amount more than Rs 2000 cr. The committee will look into alleged corruption in urban housing named after NTR.

Jagan is very particular that the committee dwells deeply into the land pooling process for the construction of Amaravati. “There is deep-rooted malice in pooling of land, allotment of plots and leaking information to the realtors close to past chief minister so that they can benefit from the skyrocketing land prices,” a minister in the committee observed.

The Chief Minister has asked the committee to look for various options on getting the excess money paid to agencies by the earlier government. While some of the ministers advised the government to hold talks with the firms that have won the bids, the Chief Minister seems to have opted for the “Reverse Tendering Process, pointing out that such a process will also help the earlier bidder to participate in the process all over again.

According to state minister Kurasala Kannababu, the committee will meet every four days to check progress on the subjects selected for scrutiny. “Subject specialists will be called for help in case of technical issues. Several NGOs also confirmed that AP stood on the top in the matters of corruption, so we will also look into those reports,” he said.