'Call money' racket: Chandrababu Naidu plays down ‘CM’ row

Mangalagiri (Guntur district): Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, has alleged politicizing of ‘call money’ issue by Opposi-tion YSR Congress and accused it of stalling the Assembly unnecessarily.

Mr Naidu claimed that only one call money related sexual harassment case came to the police and the government is taking action to restrain such harassments but the Opposition is not cooperating with the government to restrain call money with a suitable law.

Mr Naidu along with Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare J.P. Nadda laid the foundation stone for the construction of All India Institute of Medi-cal Sciences (AIIMS) at Mangalagiri on Saturday.

He said that the spendthrift mindset will force the public into the private finance web so the ideology of the public should change and felt if the public remains ada-mant, then there is no use of laws or Acts.

Explaining the call money case, Mr Naidu said that when the complaint of call money was received on December. 11, he immediately called Vijayawada police commissioner, Gowtam Sawang and DGP, J.V. Ramudu and ordered stringent action against the culprits without bias. He said that call money culprits tried to sexually harass a wom-an who had taken Rs 10 lakh as loan and it was very cruel hence the government decided to end these atrocities by making a law to control call money and further to establish special courts to punish the culprits.

He felt that using of government provided loans from MUDRA banks will restrain call money. The CM alleged that the Opposition party is defaming Vijayawada’s reputation to malign the fame of new capital Amaravati despite initiation of stern action against call money culprits.

He added that he asked for information about call money harassments from YSRC in the Assembly but in vain. Stalling the Assembly session would affect public welfare bills. Mr Naidu wondered how the new capital would develop without lands hence collected 33,000 acres of lands under LPS.

He alleged that as the development works will give a good name to the government in the state and at the Centre, opposition parties are opposing and stalling developmental works.

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