HYDERABAD: Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s plans to shift the capital of Andhra Pradesh from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam have suffered a setback with legal and legislative hurdles. While the Andhra Pradesh High Court issued a stay on change of the capital, the Opposition TDP dominated Legislative Council has referred the relevant Bill to a select-committee. The Assembly has passed the Bill a day before on Wednesday.
After a nail-baiting day-long debate in the Council where the Opposition TDP has 32 out of 55 members, on Thursday, its chairman Ahmed Shariff referred the Andhra Pradesh Decentralisation and Inclusive Growth of All regions Bill to a select-committee, which would further study the piece of legislation and come up with suggestions.
This Bill aims to shift the executive capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam and set up four or five regional development councils for inclusive growth of all 13 districts in Andhra Pradesh. Jagan’s intention is not to concentrate entire development in one major city of Amaravti, but decentralise it to different cities across the state.
Usually, its takes a minimum three months’ time for any select committee to come up with its report and then the council sends back the Bill to the Assembly will have to pass it for a second time without changes for its final passage. The whole process is expected to take at least four months and the Jagan government will have to wait till then to shift the Secretariat from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam.
Chief Minister Jagan has convened the special session of the Assembly and Council only for the purpose of passing the Bill to locate executive capital at Visakhapatnam, the Assembly at Amaravati and the High Court at Kurnool. Besides, the government also introduced another Bill paving for setting up of regional development councils for the growth of all 13 districts in Andhra.
In the third Bill, the government proposed to change the name of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) to Amaravati Metropolitan Region Development Authority (AMRDA), thus stripping Amaravati off the title of capital. Amaravati will continue to be there, not as the capital of Andhra, but as the location of the Assembly.
The Legislative Council has refused to pass the three Bills on the ground that they needed to be studied in depth and that public views needed to be collected. After a day-long wrangling and war of words in the Council, chairman Shariff used his discretionary powers under Rule 154 and sent the pieces of law to the select committee.
At the same time, the Andhra Pradesh High Court bench headed by J.K. Maheshwari directed the government not to shift the Secretariat or the offices from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam until further orders and posted the case to 21 February, while hearing a batch of writ petitions on the issue. Andhra Praedesh advocate-general Sriram Subramaniam’s pleas opposing the stay didn’t cut ice with the High Court.
These developments have come as a dampener to Jagan’s YSR Congress government which was keen on locating the Secretariat to Visakhapatnam in a phased manner from 20 January. The government has also made arrangements to celebrate the Republic Day on 26 January at Visakhapatnam on a grand scale, but has dropped the plans in the wake of these developments.
The council setback and High Court orders have put brakes on the enthusiasm of the Jagan government to limit Amaravati to the Assembly sessions and divert the day-to-day administration to Visakhapatnam on the ground that the port city has enough developed infrastructure. Even while piloting the Bill, Chief Minister Jagan contended that Amaravati as conceived by the TDP government was an unviable project.
“We cannot afford to spend around Rs 1.10 lakh crore on one single city construction and this is a huge burden on a poor state like ours; our priorities are for developing irrigation canals, rural roads, heath care facilities and schools etc. Our government is not interested in real estate business and sell the government lands at Amaravati for its future funding,” Jagan told the Assembly.
Jagan differed with the arguments of former Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu that Amaravati was a self-financing city that can spur the growth of entire Andhra Pradesh in the coming years. Naidu and his 21 MLAs in the Assembly tried to convince the government that Andhra Pradesh needed a world-class capital like Hyderabad, Bangalore or Delhi, but Jagan and his ministers rejected the idea, terming it “outdated” and “unviable”.