Industry in Andhra smarts under 'vendetta politics' as many units shift

On August 4, Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, adviser to the Andhra Pradesh government and the official voice of Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, expressed the government’s underlying intent to script the exit of Amara Raja Batteries, owned by TDP’s vocal MP Jayadev Galla. Talking to the media in Amaravati, the state capital, Reddy went on record saying the government has shown the company the door, citing environmental reasons.

The adviser’s remarks came in the wake of reports that the company, allegedly subjected to harassment from the government, is holding talks with the neighbouring Tamil Nadu government to move away from Andhra Pradesh.

Galla Ramachandra Naidu, father of Jayadev Galla, founded the batteries unit in 1985 after returning from the US.

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Amara Raja Batteries, with revenues of $ 1 billion through its plants at Karakambadi near Tirupati and in Chittoor, is one of the three major industries in Andhra’s backward Rayalaseema region. (The others are Kia Motors in Ananathapur district and Sri City near Sri Kalahasthi in Chittoor district.) The country’s second largest company in battery manufacturing, Amara Raja provides direct employment to 14,000 people and indirect employment to around 20,000.

Before Ramakrishna Reddy’s statement, GSRKR Vijayakumar, member secretary, Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board, said the board has served closure orders on the company along with 50 others on grounds of causing threat to the environment. Vijayakumar said high levels of lead were found in the untreated discharges let out from Amara Raja Batteries causing serious public health hazards. “Our concern is people’s health rather than the polluting industries,” Ramakrishna Reddy said.

Interestingly, Galla Aruna Kumari, mother of Jayadev, was once a trusted follower of Jagan’s father YS Rajasekhar Reddy (YSR) before she defected to the TDP. She served as a minister during 2004-09 in the YSR cabinet. “The company is in existence for more than three decades and it existed very much during the period of YSR government. If it really was a polluting industry, why couldn’t it be shut down then itself,” a senior official from Amara Raja said.

Vivek Lankamala, a netizen, in a Facebook post criticised the government’s attempt to “browbeat” the company, and asked why it remained silent over similar public health hazards caused by a uranium plant that came up in Pulivendula, the CM’s home constituency in Kadapa district.

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The developments forcing the exit of Amara Raja are seen as an extension of Jagan Reddy’s reversal of industrial policies piloted by his rival and TDP’s former chief minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu. Jayadev, one of the three TDP MPs who won the Lok Sabha election in 2019 braving the Jagan wave, provides financial backing to the party as its politburo member.

Jagan is also accused of striking at the resource pool of the TDP by targeting the industries and business establishments owned by its leaders.

The UAE-based LuLu Group was forced to suspend its investment plans involving a world-class convention centre in Visakhapatnam with ₹ 2,000 crore after the YSR Congress government cancelled a piece of land allotted to it by the previous Naidu government.

The Naidu government succeeded in bringing Kia Motors, a South Korean multinational automobile manufacturer, to locate its India plant in the drought-prone Ananthapur district by investing $2 billion. After the change of government, media reports surfaced suggesting that Kia Motors is planning to move away to Tamil Nadu. Though the company deferred its shifting plans, it reportedly relocated its ancillary units to Bengaluru, 100km away from its main plant at Penugonda. The ruckus created by a local MP of the ruling party at the time of the launching of the plant operations served as a backgrounder for the company’s shifting plans.

Immediately after coming to power, the Jagan government launched a crackdown on the transport businesses of former MP and TDP’s strongman in Rayalaseema, J.C. Diwakar Reddy, and seized over 50 busses operated by his family. Subsequently, Diwakar Reddy’s brother Prabhakar Reddy was arrested on charges of buying scrap vehicles, illegally registering them, plying them and selling some of them in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act.

TDP’s former minister Siddha Raghava Rao, who owns mining units in Prakasam district, was forced to defect to the YSRC following a series of raids by the mining department. Similarly, Vasupalli Ganesh, a sitting legislator in Visakhapatnam and an educationist, also switched to the Jagan camp after raids on his educational institutions.

An industry representative who served as the chairman of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), Tirupati chapter, wishing to be not quoted, called for proactive measures from the government to tap the potential of local manpower by ushering in fast-tracked industrial growth in the Rayalaseema region. Land and resources are abundantly available in the region but youths in large numbers are migrating to the neighbouring cities of Bengalore, Chennai and Hyderabad in the absence of any major promising industry locally.

The failure to get a special category status ensuring certain incentives for prospective investors is also a reason for the slugging industrial growth. The Union government has promised the status during the UPA-II, but the NDA government backed out. Jaganmohan Reddy, while in opposition, launched street battles pressing for special status by exposing the alleged failure of his rival Naidu to get the Centre to keep its promise.

After Hyderabad – the state capital with a hub of IT and manufacturing industries – went to Telangana in the course of the bifurcation in 2014, Andhra Pradesh is left with no capital city of such a stature. A spokesman for the AP Chambers of Commerce and Industry said industrial growth in the state took a severe beating in the light of politics of vendetta. The state, with a coast stretching for 970km, offers exciting potential for shrimp exports and agro-based industries.

“Unfortunately, not even a single investor worth mentioning has come forward in any sector in the recent past,” the chamber’s leader lamented.