Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy on September 22 (Friday) said that students were fooled in the name of skill training during the tenure of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the State.
Making a statement on the skill development scam case on the floor of the Assembly, the Finance Minister said that contrary to the TDP’s claim that lakhs of students had benefited from its skill development programmes, the government records showed that only 7,893 students were trained in JNTU-Kakinada between 2018-19 and 2022-23 fiscal years, while 16,072 students were imparted training in JNTU-Anantapur between 2016-17 and 2021-22 financial years.
“Interestingly, all these students were enrolled during the same period and they had completed the training within five days —from March 12, 2018 to March 17, 2018—” he said, wondering if a five-day session was a training or a mere demonstration.
He said the duration of a majority of the courses was at least four to six weeks, but ironically their training did not last even for a week.
Mr. Rajendranath Reddy said that siphoning off public money was a grave offence while taking students for a ride by depriving them of proper training was another serious misdeed of the then Chandrababu Naidu government.
“It’s not just about corruption. The most tragic part is that the TDP had played with the future of our students,” he said.
The Finance Minister spoke in detail about the alleged misappropriated money through shell companies. “Mr. Naidu was the chief architect of the skill development scam,” he said.
Speaking about the chronology of the skill development project, he said a Skill Development, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Department was formed on February 25 in 2015 by the then TDP government. Through G.O. No. 3, the Skill Development wing, which was until then a part of the Department of Higher Education, was made a separate entity. This was followed by G.O. no. 4 on the allocation of funds to Siemens. On June 30, 2015, a ‘fraudulent’ Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Siemens, a company called Design Tech and the Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC).
Finding fault with the structure of the project, Mr. Rajendranath Reddy said that the proposal was to create six centres of excellence and 36 technical skill development institutes at a cost of ₹3,281 crore. The State was to bear 10% of the project cost, while the remaining 90% was to be secured in the form of grant-in-aid from the two companies.
The Minister said that the ₹371 crore that was to be released to Siemens and Design Tech for establishing the skill development institutes was disbursed to Design Tech even before the institutes were set up.
“Several shell companies were floated which did not work and the then TDP government had raised bogus invoices routed through entities and individuals,” said Mr. Rajendranath Reddy.
