While his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhara Rao attempting to get higher political mileage after meeting prime minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Friday evening making some constructive suggestions to ease out public hardships due to demonetization, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu remaining in Amaravti, is trying to monitor the ground level realities.

Almost every day he has been conducting reviews with state government and bank officials in one form or another form. After requesting it to release currency notes worth Rs 10,000 crore in smaller denominations in view of the problems being faced by people two days ago, he succeeded to get Rs 2,000 crore worth currency.

RBI has released the amount for the state, so that to provide some relief to people from tomorrow onwards. The total currency released for the state by the RBI yesterday, Rs 100 notes alone amounted to Rs 400 crore that should provide some relief.

Conducting a teleconference with district collectors, officials of finance department and bankers today, he advised them to respond immediately and ensure relief for the people. He also suggested them to set call centres in each bank and provide information to people constantly.

Asking banks to estimate the currency requirements in each district and ensure money is dispatched promptly to those places, he said that Banks that have currency chests should share their cash with banks that do not have the facility, particularly in rural areas.

First few days, Naidu attempted to hijack credit to Prime Minister’s courageous announcement on demonetization stating that first he was the only leader in the country who has been insisting to abolish Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes, for the last four years so that to curb black money. However, later realising how people are how suffering to exchange their currency and also to meet their daily needs, he shifted his focus on their miseries.

It was following advices given by several TDP leaders, who cautioned him that to claim credit to this initiative at this juncture may leads to unpopularity. Since then, he stopped recollecting his credentials repeatedly in this regard.

Attempting to express his solidarity with the general public on their difficulties at banks and ATMs, he said today that in his long political life, this is the first time he is seeing a crisis that remained unresolved for such a long period. “It’s painful that the crisis caused by demonetisation persisted even after 12 days. I am feeling impatient but it’s commendable that the people are so patient,” he added.