Legal battles and political tensions over Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh

Police personnel stand guard at a protest camp of Amaravati farmers. File
| Photo Credit: K.V.S. Giri

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s proposal to shift the capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam in the name of decentralisation had come as a bolt from the blue for the thousands of farmers who visualised a global city taking shape on the multi-cropped lands given by them under the much hyped Land Pooling Scheme.

They were, for obvious reasons, gushing with exuberance over N. Chandrababu Naidu’s ‘dream project’ of a greenfield ‘people’s capital’ modeled on the lines of some of the world’s great cities like Singapore.

Ironically, the Singapore government played a significant role in designing the capital of Andhra Pradesh, as did the renowned London-based Foster + Partners on being solicited by Mr. Naidu.

The mega Amaravati project started with such a bang in 2014 when the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) came to power but five years down the lane, it ended with a whimper as Mr. Reddy had a different plan of ‘three capitals’, which he pursued all these years. That the construction of the capital city needed at least 30,000 acres was the initial stand taken by him when he was the leader of the Opposition.

But then for the sake of political expediency or perhaps a more justifiable reason, he changed tack, thereby pushing Amaravati into oblivion but with a promise to develop it as the ‘Legislative Capital’ comprising the Legislative Council and Assembly, while shifting the CMO, the Secretariat and offices of Heads of Departments to Visakhapatnam (executive capital) and the High Court to Kurnool (judicial capital).

The land-givers challenged the Andhra Pradesh Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Act, 2020 in the courts and a protracted legal battle waged by them since then ended on a positive note with the Andhra Pradesh High Court ruling on March 3, 2022 that the State government lacked the legislative competence to shift or even split the capital and that Amaravati should be developed as the single capital city. But their happiness was short-lived as the State challenged the High Court judgment by filing a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court. There are also a slew of contempt petitions to be decided by the Court.

Meanwhile, the debate is still raging outside the legal realm as the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) is bent on giving the three capitals a tangible shape if it retains power subject, of course, to the outcome of the cases being looked into by the Supreme Court.

The TDP took it as a prestige issue having promised to build a world class capital city but the situation became topsy-turvy after Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy took the reins. The issue had already infused a lot of bad blood between the YSRCP and the TDP while the BJP had been saying that the capital should not be shifted to Visakhapatnam but the High Court could be moved to Kurnool. This is seen as a duplicitous stand taken by the BJP, which has said that the Centre ‘notified’ Amaravati as the capital, and remained non-committal beyond that position.

The TDP has argued that Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s idea of decentralisation is driven by his political objectives and vowed to start rebuilding Amaravati if people vote for it this time around.

‘Failed experiment’

On his part, Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy kept the issue alive, rather, he ensured that the embers continued to burn. It is pertinent to mention that the TDP and the Jana Sena Party (JSP) have been saying that the ‘three capitals’ was a ‘failed experiment’ copied from South Africa which tried Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein as the executive, legislative and judicial capitals. Mr. Naidu and some of the Ministers in his Cabinet faced serious allegations of ‘insider trading’ of land in Amaravati. Eventually, criminal cases were booked against them which, Mr. Naidu and others argued, was nothing but a part of the YSRCP’s game of political vendetta.

On the flip side, whether it will yield electoral dividends for the YSRCP or the TDP-BJP-JSP combine and the turn it is likely to take after the elections are for anyone to hazard a guess.