YS Sharmila, the Andhra Pradesh Congress Chief, came up with her quirky model of protesting by demanding an immediate decision on the much-delayed Kadapa Steel Factory project. She staged a symbolic demonstration outside the Collector’s Office at Kadapa on Wednesday, breaking coconuts to criticise the inaction on the plant. Her protest mocked successive governments for failing to fulfill their promises and accused them of reducing the project to mere ceremonial announcements.
Addressing the media, Sharmila lashed out at previous regimes for treating the steel factory as a token project without real progress. She said the plant was a dream of her late father, YS Rajasekhara Reddy, who looked at it as a transformative initiative for Kadapa. She underlined how the proposed ₹20,000 crore project, with a capacity of 20 million tons, would directly and indirectly give jobs to more than 25,000 people.
Sharmila pointed to the central government’s commitment during the state bifurcation to establish the plant under SAIL but expressed disappointment over the repeated delays. She criticized the TDP and YSRCP governments for holding multiple groundbreaking ceremonies without taking concrete steps to complete the project.
Sharmila noted the timeline. She said that YSR first did the ground-breaking for the project. He was followed by Chandrababu Naidu, who also declared the commencement of the steel plant. YS Jagan Mohan Reddy promised to complete the project in three years time and had allotted it to JSW Steel, in 2019. She lamented in 2023 yet another bhoomi puja, nothing has moved on the real ground yet.
For instance, Sharmila highlighted in her coconut-cracking protest the inactive stance of the government and focused on an end to hollow promises. She demanded immediate measures for bringing the Kadapa Steel Plant into effect and implementing long-standing people’s aspirations for that region.