CPI (M) flays Andhra Government's new industrial policy

The new Industrial Policy announced by the State government on Friday is of no benefit to the State, particularly the workers, it is a danger to farmers and appears to be most beneficial to real estate dealers, Communist Party of India (Marxist) State secretary B.V.Raghavulu has said.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, he said that the emphasis of the new policy was more on investment and not on production. The erstwhile SEZ have now been converted to SIZ (special investment zones).

The State government announced such industrial polices in the past, but nothing productive came out of them. Out of the 103 SEZs sanctioned only 40 of them came to a productive stage.

Though the State government claimed that 5 lakh jobs would be created in these 103 special economic zones only 35,269 jobs were created in the 40 SEZs, Mr Raghavulu said.

Scams galore

Several scams were surfacing everyday in relation to APIIC and there was every danger of these SIZs turning into centres of corruption, Mr Raghavulu said.

The CPI (M) leader said that the party was against the proposed decision to auction the fishing rights of all water tanks in the State. This would affect adversely the lives of all the fishermen eking out their livelihood on them.

He also criticised the leakage of the discussions in a Cabinet meeting.

He wondered why Chief Minister K. Rosaiah was hesitating to say that there is no corruption in execution of the irrigation projects and resorting to such “leakage politics.”

(Courtesy : The Hindu)