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| CM - AP - NAIDU |
Bengaluru: Stepping out of his state for the first time on a business mission after the bifurcation of the state, Andhra Pradesh chief minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu participated in his first ever road show in the city and tried to hardsell his state to businesmen here.
Mr Naidu, who was credited for building Cyberabad in early 2000, reiterated that he would like to build ‘Brand AP’ again and create ‘Suvarna Andhra Pradesh’.
“This is our first road show after the new state was formed. Please come to my state and invest. I promise you 24x7 water and power supply. Compared to Chennai and Bengaluru, land prices are comparatively low. You know my track record, how I built Hyderabad. Once again, I promise you, I will build Brand Andhra Pradesh.”
This was the message Mr Naidu sent out throughout the day whenever and wherever he met industrialists and businessmen. He went to several industry houses including Cisco Systems and finally wound up the day with an interaction with businessmen and industrialists at a CII meeting.
True to his spirit, Mr Naidu, whose state has no big industry now, is dreaming big. He reminisced how he and S.M. Krishna had competed with each other when he was the chief minister of unified Andhra Pradesh between 1999 and 2004 and Mr Krishna was the chief minister of Karnataka for the same period.
“We are ready for a healty competition with other states. There is nothing wrong if we have a healthy competition among ourselves.” Mr Naidu announced in the morning.
With this, Mr Naidu has certainly sent a warning signal to his Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah, who is considered as anti-industry leader among the business community.
Mr Naidu had recently snatched a big industry project of Hero Motor Corp from Karnataka. Speaking about healthy competition, Mr Naidu dropped hints that he would attract more investments otherwise intended for Karnataka.
Compared to his own style of delivering speeches or his style of functioning in early 2000, Mr Naidu seems to have mellowed down. He displayed humility and earnestness to build a new state.
Unlike his focus on an urban-centric administration in 2000, Mr Naidu did not hesitate to explain to industry captains his vision on developing rural AP. This clearly showed Mr Naidu seems blending both, rural and urban development as well.
He discounted the decade between 2004-2014 as bad for both the country and his state, and said, “Now, we have a stable government at the Centre and in Andhra Pradesh too. You can trust us. I would like to convert AP into an eastern gateway of the country.”
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