Andhra Pradesh hands ‘capital’ punishment to Jagan Mohan Reddy

AMARAVATI: Several factors influenced the defeat of YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh. The main reason was the inability of the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s Government to decide on a capital and develop it accordingly.

With Hyderabad out as a common capital on June 2, the formation day of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh would have to decide on its capital. The AP Reorganisation Act of 2014 stipulated that Hyderabad would serve as the joint capital for not more than ten years.

After the formation of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh shifted out of Hyderabad citing administrative and logistic problems. It established its capital in Amaravati, the exact centre of the residual State of AP. The development of a green-field capital between Vijayawada and Guntur cities was disputed after YS Jagan Mohan Reddy became Chief Minister in 2019 defeating Naidu.

YS Jagan then unveiled a three-capital model designating Amaravati as only a legislative capital, Visakhapatnam as the administrative capital, and Kurnool as the judicial capital.

However, his plan to shift his base to the east coast hit roadblocks with the farmers who gave 33,000 acres of rich agricultural land to construct a massive capital on the banks of River Krishna through land pooling. The ongoing legal hurdles forced Jagan to conceal his plans to shift Government offices to Visakhapatnam even though he secretly built an office complex on the pristine hills of Rushikonda in the name of tourism development.

The TDP and JSP argued that development could be decentralized and capital should not be decentralised into three. Rebuilding Amaravati from where Jagan had left it had become their main election plank.

It worked out well as the people of Andhra Pradesh were fed up migrating from one capital to another from the day the Telugu people were shunted out of Chennai. It was Kurnool for a brief period and then Hyderabad which developed into a megacity.

However, the Reorganisation Act dashed their hope for union territory status to Hyderabad with an option of revenue sharing. People of Andhra Pradesh were fed with inordinate delay by the YSRCP Government to decide on a single capital as the State lacked new investments and a city to showcase its might.

Except for Kia, no new Industry set shop in Andhra Pradesh where as the sibling State of Telangana grew leaps and bounds with Hyderabad as its capital. Young people still migrated to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai for job opportunities. Daily wage earners and construction workers were hard hit because of the inordinate delay in fixing capital.

All the realtors left their housing projects incomplete after Jagan shut down the construction of capital at Amaravati. The Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) which was supposed to be established in the State capital, the ESI Medical College, and many more Central Government establishments that would have been established in the State capital kept their decisions in abeyance in the absence of fixed capital to the State.

The YS Government’s obsession with erasing the memory of Naidu by demolishing Praja Vedika, and Anna Canteens that catered Rs 5 lunch for the poor and needy, political vendetta, and lack of asset creation fueled the anti-incumbency factor in the State.

The massive support in favour of the TDP-JSP-BJP in Krishna and Guntur districts and the victory of Nara Lokesh in Mangalagiri the Assembly segment under which the State capital was located indicated that the people wanted to hand a ‘capital’ punishment to the YSRCP.