Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Saturday launched Clean Andhra Pradesh (CLAP) under the Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 to make the state garbage and litter-free, with emphasis on visual cleanliness.

At a p r o g r a m m e in Vijayawada, he flagged off about 4,000 new garbage collection vehicles for deployment in various urban and rural local bodies. The state government is using funds under the 15th Finance Commission grant and also Rs 350 crore is being collected from urban residents as a user charge (garbage cess) for the programme.

The government is still working out the quantum of garbage cess to be imposed in rural areas, according to Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Minister P R C Reddy. The government is supplying 1.20 crore coloured (blue, green and red) bins for 40 lakh households in 124 ULBs.

The Swachh Andhra Corporation has also drawn up plans to set up 225 garbage transfer stations in the ULBs, where the primary waste collected from households will be compacted and sent to the treatment plants. A sum of Rs 220 crore from the 15th Finance Commission grant will be used for this.

Municipal Administration Minister Botsa Satyanarayana said 72 integrated solid waste management plants would be set up in the state under the Public-Private Partnership mode.

Telangana Congress leaders pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi before launching agitation: Telangana police today thwarted plans of a massive agitation launched by the Opposition Congress by taking into custody several party leaders while state president Revanth Reddy was stopped from leaving his residence for the 67-day long political programme which began on Gandhi Jayanti.

Youth Congress president BV Srinivas was injured in the fracas with police. Mr Reddy accused chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao of resorting to intimidating tactics to suppress the voice of jobless youths.

Congress had announced a 67-day long agitational programme “Vidyarthi Nirudyoga Jung Siren” till 9 December demanding justice for students and unemployed youths accusing the TRS government of failing to tackle unemployment which was a key demand during the statehood agitation.

Earlier police took away the statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar which the protestors were planning to put up at the protest site. Some Congress leaders also alleged that after the Governor left Bapu Ghat all celebrations were wound up preventing people from visiting the place during Gandhi Jayanti.

A youth Congress member was also injured when he tried to commit suicide over the demands of jobs, claimed the party. They also alleged that police stopped the sale of tickets for Metro to prevent the Congress supporters from reaching the protest site.

Mr Reddy said that the war bugle has already been sounded and the agitation will now spread to every corner of the state. Telangana Congress has witnessed a resurgence which is quite visible after Mr Reddy took over recently and has launched several agitations since then.

After an argument with the policemen deployed at the gates of his residence, Mr Reddy accused the chief minister of behaving like the Taliban and wondered what was wrong in paying tribute to the martyr Srikanth Chary. He also demanded that the state government must clear dues of fee reimbursement scheme and all the 1.91 lakh job vacancies must be filled up.

Also, the state government should start paying the unemployment allowance with retrospective effect from December 2018 when Mr Rao had made the promise in election rallies.