Credit for VSP revival efforts go to CM Naidu, says TDP State president Palla

TDP State president and Gajuwaka MLA Palla Srinivasa Rao on Friday said that recent breakthroughs in effort to revive Visakhapatnam Steel Plant are possible only due to Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s “far-sighted and decisive” leadership.

He cited the Ministry of Heavy Industries’ crucial decision to convert ₹2,400 crore in power dues into share capital, the ₹14,000-crore revival package jointly approved by the Centre and the State, the deposit of ₹9,500 crore into RINL accounts, and the restoration of the third blast furnace.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Petitions Committee on the Comprehensive Land Survey held here under the chairmanship of Deputy Speaker Raghu Rama Krishna Raju.

Srinivasa Rao rebutted the narrative that the plant cannot function without captive mines, calling it “a politically motivated falsehood.” YSRCP and CITU leaders, he alleged, “choose not to see facts—only the falsehoods that serve their political ends.”

The TDP State president urged the administration to respond with urgency and sensitivity to the land-related hardships that citizens have been enduring for months.

He stressed that departments must work in close coordination, rather than operating in silos, to restore confidence in the system.

Speaking at the review, Srinivasa Rao drew attention to an unsettling trend within the Public Grievance Redressal System (PGRS): Of the 12 lakh complaints received in the past 18 months, nearly 7 lakh pertained to revenue and land matters. This, he noted, was a “stark indicator” of deep-rooted structural deficiencies in land administration.

He pointed out recurring irregularities—incorrect survey numbers, wrongful or missing name entries in official records, the failure to update registration records after lands were cleared from Section 22(A), technical discrepancies in Webland data, changes in survey numbers during the re-survey process, and prolonged delays in issuing passbooks. These issues, he said, were fuelling “widespread dissatisfaction and confusion among the people.”

Emphasising the need for seamless departmental integration, the MLA underscored the urgency of establishing an automatic data-synchronisation system across the registration, revenue,l and survey departments.

The meeting was attended by MLAs Vishnu Kumar Raju and Konathala Ramakrishna, the APLA Secretary, senior IAS officials, and members of the Revenue Department.