Buoyed with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) clearance to his pet project Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has decided to invite Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to lay some foundation stones for the construction of the green field capital city in the last week of January 2018, when the latter visits India to be one of the guests on Republic Day. Loong, one of the 10 heads of governments of Asean countries invited by India to be one of the guests on Republic Day, is the prime force behind the Singapore government and private consortiums’ initiative to build the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh. Singapore’s trade and industries minister S. Iswaran has been coordinating the consortia’s projects in AP. Naidu wanted to invite Loong last year to oversee the ground work of the capital city construction, but the idea was shelved as there was no official invitation to the PM from the Government of India. Now that India has officially invited him, Loong can add Amaravati to his itinerary, a senior official in AP government told The Sunday Guardian.CM Naidu is interested in arranging some foundation stone laying ceremonies for the capital city’s administrative zone buildings through the visiting PM. The government is also planning to invite some Union ministers to join the occasion, the official said. By the time the government would be finalising the designs of all major buildings like Assembly, High Court, and Secretariat etc. Naidu has more reason to invite the Singapore PM now as the NGT has cleared the construction of the capital city at the present location on the banks of River Krishna, between Vijayawada and Guntur. The tribunal headed by Justice Swatantra Kumar on Friday rejected petitions filed by three activists, including former IAS officer E.A.S. Sarma, and allowed the government to go ahead with the city project. The tribunal, while ending the almost two-year long litigation on Amaravati construction, ordered the setting up of two committees to ensure there was no deviation from the plans submitted to it and natural water bodies and green cover were protected. An amount of Rs 5 crore was to be kept as deposit with the panels so that any violations would lead to confiscation of the money as penalty. Iswaran, who led a Singapore delegation to Amaravati on Friday, welcomed the NGT verdict and asked the CM to comply with its order. Iswaran told the media on Saturday that the tribunal ruled that around 33,000 acres of land pooled for the city was not forcibly taken from farmers. He hoped that Loong’s visit would further boost Singapore’s association with Andhra Pradesh and India. The CM has requested Iswaran to run daily direct air services between Singapore and Vijayawada’s Gannavaram airport that comes under Amaravati, but the minister agreed to consider plying three days a week to begin with from next year on.
Naidu also made a similar request to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, who belongs to his TDP and sources said that the Air India is likely to commence direct flights between Vijayawada and Singapore soon.