Amid protests and shouting of slogans, the Andhra Pradesh Assembly today passed a resolution urging the Centre to accord Special Status to the State enabling it to achieve speedy growth.
Speaker K Siva Prasad Rao adjourned the House to meet on Wednesday after the passing of the resolution that saw a heated debate and led to chaos for sometime.
Leader of the House and Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu presented the motion for a debate on the Special Status tag and spoke for about one and half hours despite interruptions and potshots from the Leader of the Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy.
The Speaker announced that the House had got unanimous support for the Special Status tag.
During his presentation, Naidu made a strong pitch for Special Status tag. The Centre is said to have changed its mind on not offering the Special Status tag, as it appears from Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu's comments at Nellore a few days back saying that the Centre would not backtrack on its Special Status commitment and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would take a final call after NITI Aayog submitted its report on the issue.
Maintaining that he had repeatedly asked the Prime Minister for the Special Status tag, the Leader of the House also requested the Centre to give better financial assistance to make the State attain parity with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, tax exemptions, funds for the capital city construction, the setting up of 13 Central institutes, implementation of Section 8 and funds for the Polavaram project.