Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 31: The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday announced that the port city of Visakhapatnam will soon become the state’s administrative capital.
Addressing investors at the International Diplomatic Alliance Meet in New Delhi, Reddy said, “I am here to invite you to Visakhapatnam, which is going to be our capital in the days to come.” He did not set out a timeline, but added, “I myself will be shifting over to Visakhapatnam in the months to come. I am inviting you to the Global Investors Summit we are organising on March 3 and 4 at Visakhapatnam.”
Chief Minister’s statement apparently suggesting that the idea of developing Amaravati as the state’s capital had been scrapped, assumes significance in the wake of a case pending in the Supreme Court. The previous TDP government had planned to develop Amaravati as the state’s new capital after Hyderabad was allocated as capital to Telangana after the bifurcation of the state in 2014. Reddy’s announcement also showed that he apparently was sticking to the three-capital plan — other two being Kurnool and the existing capital Amaravati — despite the High Court having ruled last year that it can’t make a law for that. The case is pending in the Supreme Court on an appeal by Mr Reddy’s YSRCP government. The Supreme Court is supposed to hear the case on Tuesday.
Mr Reddy, who made the assertion about Visakhapatnam while marketing an investment summit to be held there, has consistently favoured the coastal city as the Executive Capital. He has said in the past too that he would work from there.
The Andhra government in 2015 led by TDP’s N Chandrababu Naidu, operating out of Hyderabad in the interim, had declared that Amaravati, in the Vijayawada-Guntur region on the banks of the river Krishna, would come up as the new capital. Then in 2020, the state planned to have three capital cities — Visakhapatnam for the executive, Amaravati for the legislature, and Kurnool for the judiciary. Amaravati has been at the centre of an alleged land scam, for which Mr Reddy’s party YSRCP has demanded a probe against the previous chief minister, Mr Naidu.
Mr Reddy’s party alleges that some people who were told in advance about the location of the new capital had bought land there to benefit from an imminent boom. In a representation to the Centre, the state government said over 4,000 acres were bought by such people in 2014.
But N Chandrababu Naidu, while denying any such wrongdoing, had questioned why land originally acquired from the farmers to build a new capital was being sold off by the YSRCP government. Some months ago, the Leader of Opposition specifically found fault with the AP Capital Region Development Authority’s decision to lease out the residential towers, built for government employees, to private entities.
Favoured as a capital by Jagan Reddy, the coastal city of Visakhapatnam — its name sometimes shortened to Vizag — is the largest and most populous city in Andhra Pradesh. After Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, it is the second largest city on the east coast of India.
The Alliance summit where Reddy made the announcement about the new capital was attended among others by Mr. Tae Jin Park, MD & CEO, of KIA Motors (Korea), and Mr. Yamaguchi, MD & CEO, of Toray industries. (Japan), Mr. Deepak Dharnarajan Iyer, President, Cadbury India (USA), Mr. Roshan Gunawardhana, Director, Everton Tea India Pvt Ltd (Italy), Mr. Sergio Lee, Director, Apache and Hilltop Group (Taiwan) and Mr. Phani Kunar, CMD, Saint-Gobain Industries India Pvt Ltd (France).
The event was a precursor to the upcoming global investors’ summit scheduled for March 3 and 4 in Visakhapatnam, where several top industrialists have been invited. The summit has been planned as an initiative to attract global investments to the state.
In 2019, Reddy first proposed the idea of “decenstralised development” and advocated for the establishment of three capitals in the state. He said that Amaravati — which previous CM N Chandrababu Naidu started to develop as the state capital — would be the Legislative capital, while Visakhapatnam would be the Executive Capital, and Kurnool the judicial capital. He emphasised the same over the years. The government also passed the Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Act in 2020 on the matter but repealed it in November 2021.
Along with YSR Congress party (YRSCP) ministers, the CM has held public meetings and rallies to drum up support for the decentralisation plan. On March 3, 2022, the Andhra Pradesh High Court directed the state government to develop the proposed capital Amaravati as envisaged under the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) Act of the previous Telugu Desam Party government, and set a deadline of six months to develop the capital city.
It also spoke of the farmers who gave up land for the development of the capital city in Amravati and organised themselves under the banner of the Rajdhani Rythu Parirakshana Samithi and filed petitions in the High Court challenging the state government’s decision.
The High Court said the government should also develop the plots allocated to farmers in lieu of the agricultural land they gave up, and hand it back in three months, and that it must develop infrastructure facilities around the developed plots. The High Court order said other plans too, such as the development of nine theme cities– knowledge city, health city, electronics city, tourism city, justice city, media city, sports city, finance city, and government city of Amaravati – as envisaged under the CRDA should be carried through.
The Jagan Mohan Reddy, government, however, went on to challenge the High Court’s order in the Supreme Court in September last year.
On November 28, 2022, the SC stayed directions of the High Court till January 31, 2023, and sought responses from the Centre, the Andhra Pradesh government, and the Amravati Rajdhani Rythu Parirakshana Samiti. At the time, Chief Justice U U Lalit recused himself from the case as he had given his opinion on the issue of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2013 before the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, was passed.
By veering to Visakhapatnam nearly 500 km east of Hyderabad, Reddy is poised to give it leverage in transforming the urban agglomeration on the Eastern Seaboard into a bustling metropolis. The city has the potential to evolve in size and stature, eclipsing the capitals of the relatively new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh, and more recently, Telangana.
