Jagan carries out 63-km roadshow over move to privatise Andhra medical colleges
Thousands of party workers and local people joined Jagan all along his journey, despite stringent restrictions.
YSR Congress Party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday put up a 63-km long roadshow from Visakhapatnam to Makavarapalem of Narsipatnam block in the neighbouring Anakapalli district to highlight the alleged attempt by the Telugu Desam Party-led coalition government to privatise the medical colleges.
Thousands of party workers and local people joined Jagan all along his journey, despite stringent restrictions imposed by the police to prevent any untoward incidents. At Makapavarapalem, Jagan inspected the semi-finished medical college building at Makavarapalem, construction of which was taken up during his government in 2022.
“Now, the present government is conspiring to entrust this government medical college to the private parties,” he alleged, addressing a gathering. He demanded that the government roll back the plan to privatise the medical colleges and announced the launch of state-wide protests and a signature campaign with one crore signatures to mount pressure on the government.
Jagan said his government had taken the initiative to bring 17 medical colleges to make medical care and education accessible to the people. Of these 17 medical colleges, five were completed during his term and classes had begun in Pulivendula and Paderu.
He alleged that the Chandrababu Naidu government had even issued a memo to stop the construction of the medical colleges with the intention of privatizing them.
He said the total medical seats would have gone up to 4,910, with 2,360 of them available free of cost to poor students and the rest at much lower fees than private colleges, ensuring crores of families could access affordable medical education and free healthcare.
Jagan said Naidu’s claim of lack of funds for completing the medical colleges was false as the projects were tied up with NABARD funds and also included under Special Assistance for Infrastructure schemes of the Centre, providing interest-free loans repayable over 50 years.
“With only ₹5,000 crore needed, spending ₹1,000 crore annually was well within reach but Naidu deliberately stalled them,” he said.
On his way to Narsipatnam, Vizag Steel Plant (VSP) employees met Jagan and sought his support to their fight against privatisation of steel plant. Similarly, farmers of Chodavaram Sugar Factory also met him and said that the government failed to release ₹35 crore due to them, affecting 24,000 families.
Telugu Desam Party leader and state information minister Kolusu Parthasarathi criticised Jagan for equating the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model with privatization. He questioned Jagan’s understanding of the PPP model and accused him of deliberately misleading the public to cover up his own government’s failures.
He pointed out that key infrastructure projects like Gangavaram Port, Bhogapuram Port, and Machilipatnam Port were all developed under the PPP model during Jagan’s tenure.
