Amaravati to be single capital, Andhra informs SC in affidavit

Andhra Pradesh's government, led by CM N Chandrababu Naidu, affirmed Amaravati as the sole capital, ending the previous three-capital plan.

Hyderabad: Amaravati is being developed as the lone capital city of Andhra Pradesh, the state government led by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has informed the Supreme Court in an affidavit, ending the discussion over the three-capital plan envisaged by the previous YS Jagan Mohan Reddy regime.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu (PTI)

State’s chief secretary Neerabh Kumar Prasad submitted the affidavit, a copy of which HT has seen, in the Supreme Court on December 10 and it came to light on Thursday.

“The government will continue with, and complete construction of, a single capital city for the state of Andhra Pradesh located at Amaravati,” it said.

The development came ahead of the hearing by the top court on a special leave petition filed by the previous YSRCP government, challenging the Andhra Pradesh high court’s March 3, 2022 order that upheld Amaravati as the only capital city of the southern state.

The Naidu government has urged the Supreme Court to dispose of the SLP filed by the previous regime, saying it would comply with the high court order. It, however, requested the top court for a modified schedule given by the high court to complete the development of Amaravati as the capital within six months. The affidavit said the government would complete the works within three years.

Soon after coming to power, Jagan Mohan Reddy in June 2019 halted the construction works in Amaravati, which was proposed as the single capital city by the previous Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government, and instead decided to build three capitals — administrative capital at Visakhapatnam, legislative capital at Amaravati and judicial capital at Kurnool.

The controversial decision was, however, challenged before the high court by the landowners who parted from their land for the development of Amaravati as the single capital. On March 3, 2022, a division bench of the high court declared Amaravati as the only capital of the southern state. The court also noted that the state legislature had “no competence” to enact any legislation on three capitals for the state, as proposed by the Reddy government in November 2019. The Reddy regime challenged the high court order by filing an SLP before the top court.

Things, however, changed after Naidu became the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh once again this summer following a landslide victory in the assembly polls his TDP contested in alliance with the BJP and the JanaSena Party of actor-politician Pawan Kalyan. The new government has fallen back to its original decision of developing Amaravati as the only capital city of the state.

The Naidu government’s affidavit before the top court further said that according to the agreements made with the stakeholders — around 24,000 farmers who gave away their land in 29 villages to the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) for the development of capital city under the land pooling scheme (LPS) — the state government would develop a single capital city.

“It shall house the offices of all three civic wings of the state and it shall be developed in terms of the notified master plan and the core developmental plans, including but not limited to, the development of nine thematic cities,” the affidavit said.

The Amaravati capital city will have 27 townships, each around 1,000 acres, with a planned population capacity of 100,000-150,000 each. Each township will be further divided into four neighbourhoods of 250 acres each. According to the master plan, Amaravati would be developed through nine economic thematic cities, each catering to financial, government, justice, knowledge, media and cultural, sports, health, tourism, and electronics.

Reacting to the development, YSRCP spokesperson and former MLA G Srikanth Reddy said his party-led government had never opposed development of Amaravati. “He (Jagan Mohan Reddy) had come out with the three-capitals plan only for inclusive and decentralised administration, in tune with the spirit of Sri Bagh Pact signed almost a century ago to develop all the three regions. We did not want the entire development to be concentrated only in Amaravati, as was the case with Hyderabad, which led to the Telangana movement,” he said.

He alleged that the incumbent Naidu-led government was trying to promote Amaravati as the only capital only to protect the interests of a few sections. “It is securing huge loans from World Bank and elsewhere for Amaravati. We are questioning what the share of north Andhra and Rayalaseema in these loans?” the YSRCP leader alleged.