CPI says government reneging on promise to protect Visakhapatnam Steel Plant

Communist Party of India (CPI) State secretary G. Eswarayya has condemned what he described as the “anti-people and anti-worker” policies of the Central and State governments and their alleged attempts to hand over public lands to private investors in the name of development and employment generation.

Mr. Eswarayya was in the city on Tuesday to participate in the general body meeting of the party’s district unit. Speaking to reporters on the occasion, he said that while the Modi and Chandrababu Naidu governments claimed to protect workers’ interests, they were in fact extending red-carpet treatment to private investors and corporate groups, many of which failed to comply with labour laws. The Labour Codes introduced by the Centre were detrimental to workers, he alleged.

The CPI leader said the Chandrababu Naidu government had failed to implement most of its election promises, including the payment of unemployment allowance to jobless youth and monthly financial support to women under the Aada Biddi Nidhi scheme. He alleged that the government had already borrowed ₹2 lakh crore, and that its repayment burden would ultimately fall on the people. Electricity consumers, he said, were already bearing an additional burden of ₹12,000 crore in the form of True Up charges.

Referring to the Chief Minister’s claim that agreements worth ₹27 lakh crore were made at the recent Global Investors Summit in Visakhapatnam, Mr. Eswarayya questioned how many companies had actually invested and how many jobs were created as a result of such summits held since 2014. He also criticised the government for allowing the closure of cooperative dairies, sugar factories, and spinning and ginning mills, asking what plans were in place for their revival. He accused the TDP-led government of going back on its promise to protect the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) and of showing more interest in handing over vacant lands in the city to corporate groups.

Earlier, senior CPI leader J.V.S.N. Murthy condemned the killing of Maoists in encounters, alleging that the Modi government’s objective was to destroy forests in Chhattisgarh and hand over the land to corporations in the name of development. CPI district leader M. Pydiraju was also present.