Hours before the Diplomatic outreach event organized to investments into the state commenced in Vijayawada the Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy gave marching orders to Navayuga Engineering Company from the Machlipatnam Port project. The CM earlier removed Navayuga from Polavaram project work.
In an order issued on Thursday, the government directed the Krishna District collector Imtiyaz to take over the 400 acres of land given to Navayuga for the development of the port immediately. The action against came after the inordinate delay in executing the project. The decision to handover the development of the Machilipatnam port was taken by Jaganmohan Reddy’s father the then Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy way back in 2010. However, the project was supposed to be implemented by the Maytas Infra, the infra wing of IT tycoon S. Ramalinga Raju, in 2008.
It is reported that the Navayuga group was not interested in developing the Machilipatnam port to safeguard their own Krishnapatnam port in Nellore on the same coastline. AP government is arguing that Navayuga took cover under the government’s failure to procure 5000 acres for the project. By 2017 the government pooled 3000 acres but the project did not kick start.
Meanwhile, in Machilipatnam Kollu Ravindra, a former minister and TDP leader have said that the fears of people of the coastal town were vindicated following the scrapping of the contract with the Navayuga group. “We have been telling that the port has been handed over to the Telangana government by YS Jaganmohan Reddy. The Telangana government want to develop the port with its land base in Kodada,” he alleged. He demanded the CM to spell out when and who will be building the port in Machilipatnam.
Then chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu laid the foundation for the deep seaport in February, a couple of months before elections. It was described as Greenfield, all-weather multipurpose seaport.