Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has more or less vacated his Hyderabad Secretariat, eight years before the time allowed as per the AP Reorganization Act. He has effectively shifted his administration to the newly built temporary Secretariat at Velagapudi in the under construction Amaravati as five out of the total six blocks meant for the Scretariat have started functioning from 17 October.
Naidu got Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lay the foundation stone for Amaravati city on 6 October 2015 and commenced construction of the temporary Secretariat from the first week of January this year. Thanks to the Rs 2,500 crore funds sanctioned by the Centre, the construction of the temporary Secretariat has been finished within six months.
The temporary Secretariat has been constructed on a sprawling campus of 45 acres in the heart of Amaravati city, about 15 km from Vijayawada across the Krishna river. Located amidst cash rich agricultural crops like coconut, platinum and flower gardens, the temporary Secretariat has been built in the G-plus-1 style, with an outlay of Rs 350 crore, by two infrastructure giants, L&T and Shapoorji and Pallonji.
The six blocks put together have an area of six lakh sq feet, which matches the space occupied by the AP Secretariat in Hyderabad. After the bifurcation of the state on 2 June 2014, Hyderabad’s Secretariat has been divided into two areas: the eastern part was allocated to AP, while the western part was given to Telangana.
While the first block of the Secretariat is allotted to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) and his staff, the other four blocks are allotted to other ministers. The sixth block, which is still under construction, is meant for the AP Assembly and the Legislative Council. The government has decided to hold the winter session of the Assembly in this block sometime in December.
Naidu can utilise the existing Secretariat until 2024, as Hyderabad continues to be the common capital of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana until then. But he decided to leave Hyderabad the day he was sworn in as the CM of AP on 6 June 2014, on the ground that people from Andhra’s districts would not like to travel outside their state to reach the Secretariat.
When this correspondent visited the temporary Secretariat at Velagapudi on 17 October, it was full of employees who had come in dozens of buses and other vehicles from Hyderabad. Around 7,500 employees posted in the Secretariat will have to stay either at Vijayawada, which is 15 km from Velagapudi or Guntur which is around 20 km away. This forces them to take up a busy journey on narrower roads to Velagapudi, which is still like a village in the middle of agricultural fields and canal bunds. “Can anyone work in these circumstances?” asked an employee.
Many employees who refused to be identified told this newspaper that the Chief Minister had dragged them out of Hyderabad even before the completion of the construction work in the temporary Secretariat. “See, most of our office cabins and cubicles are not yet ready, but still the government wants us to move to these premises for reasons best known to them,” said an assistant section officer in the IT department.
Women employees are not being able to cope with working in Amaravati as they have families in Hyderabad to take care of. “Our children are still studying in Hyderabad and we cannot leave them behind. We are struggling to shuffle between the two cities—Vijayawada and Hyderabad,” said a woman employee in the Revenue Department.
However, the shifting of the Secretariat to Amaravati well on time has enhanced the image of Naidu among the people of Vijayawada and Guntur. The rents of houses and guesthouses have gone up and so have land values in real estate projects. “My house rent has gone up from Rs 4,000 per month to Rs 7,000 now,” said Rajasekhara Reddy, a manager in a three star hotel, Swarna Palace in Vijayawda.
Given his Rs 18,000 monthly salary, this hike is a bit high for him, tending a family of four. But Reddy is happy that the market value of his 400-yard plot at Mangalagiri in Amaravati has gone up from Rs 75,000 (when he bought it in 2001) to Rs 1.10 crore currently. “Not just me, most of us who have plots in this area have benefited,” Reddy said with a grin while talking to this newspaper.
For them, the shifting of the AP Secretariat from Hyderabad to Amaravati is a big move, which has enhanced the certainty that the new capital will come up very soon. Even those who are working out of the Secretariat such as heads of departments and other allied offices, too, have shifted their headquarters from Hyderabad to Vijayawada or Guntur by this Dasara festival.
“People are happy to see the pace of construction in Velagapudi. Instead of travelling all the way to Hyderabad, now they are finding it easy to visit either Vijayawada or Guntur, or now the temporary Secretariat for their daily work,” Koteswar Rao, chairman of AP Physically Challenged Financial Corporation told this newspaper.
Now only a skeletal staff, particularly those who are on the duty of attending the work of the High Court are allowed to stay back in Hyderabad. But as the Chief Minister holds review meetings round the clock and on all weekdays, the officers are not taking a chance being away from Amaravati’s limits. That has set the momentum of governance in Vijayawada, Guntur and Velagapudi.