Visakhapatnam: The Andhra Pradesh government will focus on developing coastal city Visakhapatnam as the state’s IT (information technology) capital, finance minister Buggana Rajendranath said Friday. He added that the YSR Congress Party government in the state will also develop Amaravati — which was proposed as a ‘smart city’ capital under the previous Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP regime — but only “how much ever is required”.
In an exclusive interview to ThePrint on the sidelines of the Global Investors Summit hosted by the Andhra Pradesh government in Vizag, the minister said the city will be transformed to create an environment where businesses see an advantage in investing.
“We intend to have our administrative offices in Vizag, and most of the government machinery will be operating out of Vizag including chief minister’s office. This is after all compliances are met. And once administration operates out of here, people automatically get the necessity to come here. Parallelly, we intend to develop industry, especially IT-enabled and financial services and various other industries so that Vizag becomes a place of natural advantage,” he said.
On how the government plans to go about with this endeavour, Rajendranath said a master plan to improve Vizag’s social infrastructure will be the first step, followed by efforts to make it the state’s IT capital.
“Vizag is very cosmopolitan in nature. There are various institutions of national importance located here like the RINL, Eastern Naval Command headquarters, Hindustan Shipyard. Added to it is its natural beauty where coast and hill stations are close to each other. So, the social infrastructure required for better facilities for working class and youth will be provided and master plan for the area to increase living standards will be drawn,” he added.
Quashing former chief minister Naidu’s idea of making Amaravati the capital and building it as a world-class smart city like Singapore, the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government had proposed a decentralisation of capitals. In 2020, it announced a three-capital formula — Vizag as the executive, Amaravati as the legislative and Kurnool as the judicial capital.
The proposal, however, has been mired in legal hurdles and the matter is currently being heard in the Supreme Court.
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‘No govt has capacity to build a city’
Ever since CM Jagan proposed the idea of three state capitals, there have been months-long protests in Amaravati by local farmers who said that it would be an injustice to them to not develop the city as promised by the previous government after many of them gave their lands in the hope that it would be the first step towards developing a smart city.
The chief minister even announced a compensation for them but they didn’t budge.
On the issue of Amaravati, Rajendranath said Friday that the government will develop it as required and not on par with the previous government’s promise of transforming it into a smart city.
“We will develop Amaravati. The erstwhile government was not into building a capital, like an administrative one. They were more into building a city. A place like Vizag, all that you need is a few buildings to host government offices and residential needs. Whereas the previous government wanted to build a huge city which is very difficult. No government has the financial capacity or muscle to build a city in itself,” he told ThePrint.
Citing an example, the minister said Amaravati has a small population of a few lakhs and the previous TDP government had planned eight-lane roads for the city. “What are you going to do with it? And look at the expenditure with it? So, we will build good roads, good drains, good infrastructure facilities but only how much ever it is required. Not something that is impossible or impractical,” he added.
Addressing the issue of Andhra Pradesh’s poor fiscal health, he said the state was in a revenue deficit position when bifurcated in 2014. According to Rajendranath, what followed next was poor planning by the previous government, huge bills handed over from them, and the pandemic — all of which, he said, affected the state’s health. He, however, maintained that Andhra Pradesh is as financially stressed as any other state in India.
Asked about the delay in disbursement of government employees’ salaries, he said the administration is more responsible for the “poor man on the street”, indicating that welfare takes priority over the salaries of government employees.
Meanwhile, the Andhra government signed 378 MOUs worth Rs 13.4 lakh crore during the two-day Global Investors Summit held in Vizag. The summit, which started on 3 March, saw the participation of the likes of Mukesh Ambani, Karan Adani and the Jindal Group.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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