Hyderabad: Amaravati, the ambitious capital city project launched by former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s regime five years ago, will lose its sheen and stature, thanks to the recommendations of the experts committee led by retired IAS officer G.N. Rao. Instead of being a mega metropolitan cluster, Amaravati will now be a small township of city with a legislative complex and a High Court bench.
As Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has expressed similar views of the panel, Andhra Pradesh Secretariat will now go to port city of Visakhapatnam and the main seat of the High Court will be set up at Kurnool, an old city in Rayala Seema region. The G.N. Rao panel has suggested two High Court benches in Amaravati and Visakhapatnam.
The CM camp office will be set up at Visakhapatnam while a functional office for him will also be made available at Amaravati. So, the newly developed area of Amaravati, between Vijayawada and Guntur cities across River Krishna will have a Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council complexes and Raj Bhavan, marking it as legislative capital region.
As Andhra Pradesh Assembly is supposed to work for only 40 to 50 days in a year, the activity in Amaravati will only be for that period. It is to be seen, if the Governor prefers to have his Raj Bhavan on this green field area or remain in the present temporary building in Vijayawada. Some residential quarters are built for IAS officers, MLAs and MLCs, but there is no clarity on their status.
For all practical purposes, the size and stature of Amaravati is bound to dimish. The previous Chandrababbu Naidu government had pooled up around 33,000 acres of private lands from farmers plus another 15,000 acres of government land for the city. Now, the Jagan government might retain just about one third of the lands and return the rest to the farmers, original owners.
Already, the government has recognised irregularities in pooling of around 4,000 acres of lands assigned to the schedule castes and scheduled tribes in violation of the law. Andhra Pradesh municipal administration minister Botsa Satyanarayana has announced that steps were underway to return the assigned lands to their respective allotted owners.
G.N. Rao, who addressed the media at Amaravati on Friday night, explained that the panel had collected opinions from thousands of people and felt that there was a need to bring in “balanced regional growth” in Andhra Pradesh. “We have identified four regions—North-coastal, central coastal and south-coastal and Rayala Seemas—which need balanced development,” Rao said.
Rao added that Visakhapatnam was well suited to become the executive capital of Andhra Pradesh as it had all infrastructure facilities. The city is connected with air, water and railways with all major cities in the country. “We felt that Visakhapatnam as base of the Secretariat will help develop the neglected North-coastal region,” Rao said.
Kurnool has been selected as seat of the High Court as well as other judicial bodies like administrative tribunal etc as the city was promised some importance way back in 1950 under a Sri Bagh agreement between leaders of different regions of Andhra at the time. “Moreover, there has been a demand for setting up High Court at Kurnool and Visakhapatnam, and Amaravati will have benches,” Rao said.
The panel has suggested another decentralisation measure—introduction of winter and summer Assembly sessions in different cities, just like in Maharashtra, Jammu & Kashmir and Assam. Rao said a decision on this would be taken by the state government. A camp office of the CM and ministers’ quarters would be located at Amaravati, he said.
The announcement of the report of the expert panel has sparked off angry reactions from the farmers of Amaravati. Hundreds of men and women rushed on the streets and raised slogans against the G.N. Rao committee. Enraged women shouted against the Jagan government “killing the future of Amaravati”, thereby ruining lives of thousands of farmers who had donated their agricultural lands.
As if to assuage the hurt sentiments of farmers of Amaravati region, Minister Satyanarayana issued a statement saying that the government won’t neglect the development of this new capital region. “We will develop Amaravati as an educational hub. We will complete the process of allotting the plots to farmers whose lands we need for the city. We will only develop other cities along with Amaravati,” he said.