YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) head and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has hit out aggressively at the Telugu Desam Party (TDP)-dominated state government, blaming it for putting the state into a “debt trap” with excessive borrowing without any concrete development and welfare initiatives.
In a tweet on social media platform X (ex-Twitter), Jagan accused the Chandrababu Naidu government of taking almost 44% of the total debt incurred by the YSRCP government in five years—within a single year of coming back to power.
“@ncbn garu, you claim decades of experience as CM and deep understanding of governance. But in one year, your government borrowed 44% of what we did in five, without delivering any development or welfare,” Jagan wrote.
The remark comes at a time when there is increasing questioning of the financial health of Andhra Pradesh. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu recently admitted that the state has a debt burden of ₹10 lakh crore, on which the interest outgo every year will be ₹40,000 crore. Though Naidu accuses the earlier YSRCP government of running state finances poorly, he has also vowed to introduce fiscal prudence and revive languishing infrastructure and welfare schemes.
Naidu has placed the TDP as a party of “administrative discipline” and asserted that the present financial pinch is due to “reckless expenditure and poor planning” during the previous government. The ruling party has criticized the YSRCP time and again for leaving behind empty coffers and incomplete projects.
On the other hand, the opposition has accused the TDP of unsustainable lending and not delivering in terms of results on the ground. The political confrontation has intensified as the TDP government approaches its one-year milestone in office, with the financial situation sitting comfortably at the top of the list of issues in the war of words between the two factions.
As Andhra Pradesh struggles to contend with financial issues, the controversy surrounding debt is likely to continue to dominate political debate in the state.
