AP CM flagged off International Yachting Festival

Vishakapatanam, Mar 30: The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu flagged off the International Yachting Festival here on Thursday.

Conducted by the State government, the festival, which is being held from March 29 to April 1, was inaugurated in the presence of IT minister Nara Lokesh, HRD minister Ganta Srinivasarao and other local MLAs.

The Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) is facilitating necessary support for conducting the festival to make it a grand event and as well as a memorable one in the history of Visakhapatnam.

"Such a festival has never been done in the country. Yachting will boost tourism to Vizag, and thereby generate more employment. The state tourism department has been marketing the Yachting festival extensively to attract domestic and international tourists," said Naidu.

"This International Yachting Festival is the first step in developing sea tourism in Visakhapatnam. We strongly believe that this would continue in the future and Vizag would be an attractive tourist getaway for all sea/ water-based tourism events," added Krishnababu, the Chairman of VPT.

On a related note, dignitaries present at the event wore black badges on their shirts as a symbol of protest against the Centre's injustice against Andhra Pradesh.