YSRCP to launch mass movement against Vizag land scam
At a media conference organised in Visakhapatnam on Sunday, he stated that the lands were given away to favouring companies and real estate groups, ignoring public interest.
Criticising that the government has failed in keeping its election promises, Amarnath said the TDP-led coalition government has been involved in massive irregularities in land allocations in Visakhapatnam over the past 15 months.
He pointed out that while the previous YSRCP government planned to develop Visakhapatnam into a major IT destination on par with Hyderabad, the present government is diverting valuable lands to companies with no track record. Citing examples, he stated that prime lands worth thousands of crores of rupees were handed over to companies at rates as low as Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore per acre. Amarnath said this allocation had failed to generate even a single IT job for the youth in the state. The former minister stated that Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Minister Nara Lokesh were supervising these shady land deals, and that public land was being looted to benefit their associates and supporters. 'Why similar land allocations are not being made in Amaravati and why the TDP was not drawing investments there,' he questioned, criticising Naidu's frequent Singapore visits aimed at renewing old ties. Amarnath announced that YSRCP would launch a mass movement against the land scam and hold the coalition government accountable for diverting public wealth for personal gain.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
22 minutes ago
- Indian Express
As expected, paddy cultivation hits record high in Punjab, shatters state's crop diversification dreams
Punjab has set a new record in agriculture — but not the one it hoped for. The area under rice cultivation has touched an all-time high of 32.46 lakh hectares — including 6.80 lakh hectares of Basmati — marginally up from 32.43 lakh hectares last year, according to field reports from the Punjab Agriculture Department. Though the increase seems slight as compared to the last year, the area under rice is already too high and instead of decreasing area under paddy, it marks a troubling continuation of a long-standing trend: the decline of crop diversification in the state. The cultivation of paddy and Basmati is almost over in the state now. For nearly four decades, successive governments in Punjab have been striving to encourage farmers to grow alternative, less water-intensive crops such as maize, cotton, pulses, and sugarcane. Yet, paddy — heavily reliant on groundwater and backed by a guaranteed Minimum Support Price (MSP) — continues to dominate, pushing alternative crops further into the margins. Cotton belt slips further into paddy A significant shift has been recorded in Punjab's cotton belt — comprising eight districts in the Malwa region: Bathinda, Fazilka, Mansa, Muktsar, Moga, Barnala, Sangrur, and Faridkot for the past few years. These districts either have registered an increase in paddy area or no decrease, reversing efforts to maintain or expand cotton acreage. This year also the trend was no different. Bathinda saw paddy sown over 2.39 lakh hectares, up from 2.16 lakh hectares last year — an increase of 23,000 hectares. Fazilka recorded 1.30 lakh hectares under paddy, up from 1.28 lakh hectares. While Muktsar Sahib's paddy area rose to 2.03 lakh hectares from 2.01 lakh hectares, Mansa's increased to 1.46 lakh hectares from 1.44 lakh hectares last year. Barnala also recorded a small increase in the rice area from 1.14 to 1.15 lakh hectares. The remaining cotton belt districts — Sangrur, Moga, and Faridkot — maintained similar paddy acreage as last year. Meanwhile, several other districts like Tarn Taran, Nawanshahr, Ropar, Patiala, Pathankot, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur, Firozpur, Amritsar, and Fatehgarh Sahib reported a little decline in paddy area, but this was not enough to offset the gains elsewhere. Punjab's diversification efforts began in earnest in the early 1980s. The goal: reduce the state's dependency on water-intensive paddy and encourage cultivation of crops that are both economically viable and environmentally sustainable. In 2002, the then Congress-led government introduced contract farming in hopes of breaking the paddy-wheat cycle. However, the initiative faltered. A more ambitious push came in 2012-13, when the SAD-BJP government under late chief minister Parkash Singh Badal unveiled a new agriculture policy aimed at shifting 12 lakh hectares away from paddy to crops like maize, cotton, and high-value vegetables. Yet the ground reality remained largely unchanged. But the data paints a sobering picture. In the past decade, the combined area under paddy and Basmati accounts for 88 to 90 per cent and alternative kharif crops like cotton, maize, and sugarcane, rarely crossed 6 lakh hectares in most years and off late the area under these three crops has come down to merely around 3 lakh hectares. Cotton, grown over 3.35 lakh hectares in 2015, has shrunk to just 1.13 lakh hectares this year — a nearly 66 per cent drop — largely due to repeated pest (whitefly and pink bollworm) attacks and volatile market prices. Maize, expected to be a pillar of diversification, has shown little progress with 1.26 lakh hectares in 2015-16 to just 95,560 hectares this season. Sugarcane has hovered between 90,000 to 95,000 hectares since 2015-16, without significant expansion. Basmati, though still a rice crop, is considered as an alternative to paddy due to its shorter growing cycle. It too has declined — from 7.63 lakh hectares in 2015-16 to 6.80 lakh hectares this year against 6.78 lakh hectares last year. This shift toward paddy has profound implications for Punjab's fragile groundwater resources. According to a 2017-18 report by the Central Ground Water Board, the state could face an agricultural crisis by 2039, when farmers may need to dig as deep as 1,000 feet to access water. Renowned economist and agriculture expert Dr Sardara Singh Johal, who has long advocated for crop diversification, has been calling for the urgent need for a policy overhaul. He expressed several times that Punjab is facing a water emergency because of over-extraction of groundwater to support paddy. With the upper aquifers drying up, this small state, which feeds the entire country, is getting trapped in a self-destructive cycle. Experts said it will be difficult to reduce the area under paddy as long as free power is provided to the agricultural sector, and alternative crops are not supported with high-yielding seeds and assured MSP. Jaswant Singh, director, Agriculture Department, Punjab, said that the department is trying its best to enhance areas under other crops and has seen an increase under cotton, maize and Basmati as compared to last year but at the same time the area under rice has also increased.
Time of India
26 minutes ago
- Time of India
PSBs told to setup one portal for startup lending
The government has directed public sector banks to create a unified digital portal to streamline startup loan applications, sanctions, and information-sharing. Expected by October, the proposed startup hub portal will feature a single application form accessible to all PSBs. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads The government has asked state-run banks to explore the idea of setting up a " common startup hub portal " for meeting the financial needs of startups , officials centralised platform, proposed to be launched by October, would enable streamlined startup applications, loan sanctions , cross-lending and information-sharing across public sector banks (PSBs), they said."The portal will act as a single destination for all startups looking for loans, and will have a common application form. All PSBs will be able to access their details and participate as per their business plans," said one of the officials, who did not wish to be government has been pushing banks to scale up lending to startups, and a common portal is expected to speed up loan sanctions and to startups by PSBs in 2024-25 stood at Rs 956 crore."The portal will ensure a full end-to-end digital sanction and approval process. We are also working to link it with the Jan Samarth Portal. This new platform will be managed through PSB Alliance," a bank executive said on condition of government has asked PSBs to collaborate with educational institutions and incubation centres to identify and monitor early-stage startups to establish formal banking linkages. Punjab National Bank chief executive Ashok Chandra told ET in an interview after the June quarter results that the bank had come out with a new startup lending policy."We have created startup hubs in seven centres across the country and are going to have a memorandum of understanding with the many incubation centres at IIT Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai and Delhi," he had a review meeting of PSBs in June, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asked banks to proactively identify emerging commercial growth areas for the next decade and deepen corporate lending in productive sectors with a strong focus on maintaining robust underwriting and risk-management government has been pushing lenders to look at internal collaboration, create common utilities and scale them up to improve their performance and competitiveness.
Time of India
26 minutes ago
- Time of India
With BYD in fast lane, Tesla's Europe sales in July decline over 50% on-yr
Tesla continues to post steep sales declines in Europe's biggest electric vehicle (EV) markets, where the Elon Musk-led automaker is ceding significant share to China's BYD. In both Germany and the UK-by far the two leading countries for battery-electric vehicle registrations in Europe-Tesla's July sales fell by more than half compared with a year ago, according to figures reported Tuesday. BYD, by contrast, more than quadrupled registrations in each country. Last week, the national auto association for France-the No 3 market in Europe by EV sales-reported that Tesla's registrations dropped 27% in July and were down almost 40% through the first seven months of the year. Productivity Tool Zero to Hero in Microsoft Excel: Complete Excel guide By Metla Sudha Sekhar View Program Finance Introduction to Technical Analysis & Candlestick Theory By Dinesh Nagpal View Program Finance Financial Literacy i e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By CA Rahul Gupta View Program Digital Marketing Digital Marketing Masterclass by Neil Patel By Neil Patel View Program Finance Technical Analysis Demystified- A Complete Guide to Trading By Kunal Patel View Program Productivity Tool Excel Essentials to Expert: Your Complete Guide By Study at home View Program Artificial Intelligence AI For Business Professionals Batch 2 By Ansh Mehra View Program Tesla pinned the blame for its early-year sales weakness on manufacturing disruptions linked to changing over production lines for its most important vehicle, the Model Y. But the company's slump has carried on even as it's ramped up output of the redesigned SUV, adding to concerns that its chief executive officer's polarizing and often politically charged persona have damaged Tesla's brand. On Monday, the company announced that it had approved an interim award of about $30 billion worth of Tesla stock to Musk as a legal fight over his 2018 pay package drags on. Tesla's struggles have created an opening for leading European manufacturers, as well as BYD. The Chinese automaker sold more fully electric cars in Europe than Tesla for the first time ever in April. Some analysts are predicting BYD will pull ahead of Tesla globally for the full year - and that's without BYDs even being available in Tesla's home market, the US. Live Events In Germany-Europe's biggest auto market and the home of Tesla's sole assembly plant in the region- BYD outsold Tesla for the third time this year in July. Economic Times WhatsApp channel )
