Hyderabad: Visakhapatnam will be the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, said Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy in New Delhi Tuesday. The CM also said he will shift his office to the port city in the months to come.
Sources from the CM’s office, however, told ThePrint that the Andhra Pradesh government was still keen on the idea to trifurcate the state capital and Visakhapatnam will only be one of its three capitals.
The state government had first pitched the idea of having three capital cities in 2020 but the proposal has since been mired in legal hurdles.
Addressing a curtain raiser event for the forthcoming Global Investors Summit, Reddy said, “Here I am to invite you to Visakhapatnam which is going to be our capital in the days to come. I myself will also be shifting to Visakhapatnam as well in months to come. We’re organising this Global Investors Summit in Visakhapatnam on 3 and 4 March.”
He added, “I take this opportunity to personally invite all of you to this summit and request all of you to not only come over there but also put in a good word to your colleagues abroad to come and visit us and see how easy it is to do business in Andhra Pradesh.”
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Legal hurdles against three capital project
Reddy’s statement came nearly a year after the Andhra Pradesh High Court ordered the state government to develop Amaravati as the sole capital within six months. The HC had then said that the state government does not have “legislative competence” to pass any resolution for a change of capital or to bifurcate or trifurcate the capital city.
The HC’s order was in response to a series of petitions challenging the Reddy government’s idea to trifurcate the state capital. The government has proposed to make Visakhapatnam as Andhra Pradesh’s executive capital, Amaravati as its legislative and Kurnool as the judicial capital of the state.
The Andhra Pradesh government had challenged the HC’s order in the Supreme Court and obtained a partial stay on it. This petition is ongoing in the top court.
Following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the former state capital, Hyderabad, became part of Telangana, but would serve as the two states’ joint capital for 10 years.
The proposed new city of Amaravati was to have been developed as the eventual capital of the successor state of Andhra Pradesh. Amaravati was proposed as the capital city during former chief minister Chandrababu Naidu’s regime. He had also proposed making it a world-class smart city.
CM Reddy Tuesday said Andhra Pradesh was ranked high in the Ease of Doing Business in the country. But while the CM pitched for investment in the port city, rising debt and low revenue in the state has been a cause of concern.
Reddy had Monday also said that the state spent about Rs 1.92 lakh crore in the last 3.5 years (ever since he took over as the CM in 2019), on direct benefit transfer schemes.
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