Naidu Promises to Protect Vizag Steel Plant

Visakhapatnam: Telugu Desam supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu said he will take the help of his alliance partners and protect the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant from privatisation. Addressing his Prajagalam meeting at Gajuwaka on Sunday evening, Naidu said it is the agitation by Telugu Desam, which put pressure on the central government to withdraw the proposals for privatising the VSP. “I myself addressed a meeting in Gajuwaka and appealed to Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy to lead the agitation. But he did not respond,” Naidu said. He reminded that Atal Behari government also thought of privatising the steel plant, but he stalled it successfully.

The TDP chief said after the elections, he will lead a team of the alliance partners and ask the centre



to entirely drop the proposal for privatisation of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. He maintained that Telugu-speaking people are sentimentally attached to the steel plant. “They still chant `Visakha Ukku Andhrula Hakku,” he pointed out. Recalling his personal services to Visakhapatnam after it got ravaged by super cyclone Hudhud, 

Naidu said his regime ensured rapid development after the cyclone and brought IIM, IT companies and many other industries to the port city. The former chief minister charged that the YSRC government, in the name of making Visakhapatnam a capital, has turned it into a drug trading hub. He recalled the recent haul of 25,000 kg of drugs at Visakhapatnam Port.