Naidu completes challenging one year in office today

It was a year of challenges for Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, once the poster boy of IT and reforms in India, who completes one year in office in the truncated state on Monday as he grapples with the fallout of an acrimonious bifurcation.

After a 10-year break, Naidu rode to power in last year's Assembly elections on the back of his image as a development-oriented leader, while YSR Congress was relegated to the second position and the Congress, once a dominant force in the southern state, decimated.

Naidu, however, found himself in an unenviable position as the new Andhra Pradesh (post formation of Telangana), comprising 13 districts of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema had no capital of its own and the state had a revenue deficit of about Rs 16,000 crore.

Though Hyderabad, the crown jewel of undivided Andhra Pradesh, is the common capital for both states, the Andhra Pradesh government does not have any executive powers over the city or a share in the revenues from the metropolis.