Andhra Pradesh govt to withdraw Bill to create three capital cities

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy

The Andhra Pradesh government on November 22 announced it will withdraw the controversial Bill that proposed to set up three capitals in the state.

The decision on introducing a Repeal Bill - to scrap the legislation that was passed last year - was taken at the state Cabinet meeting convened by Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy earlier in the day, reports said.

The legislation that is set to be withdrawn - AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Act - was enacted by the YSR Congress-led government in June 2020.

As per the Bill, Visakhaptnam was to be set up as the executive capital, Amravati as the legislative capital and Kurnool as the judicial capital.

In a statement issued in the legislative assembly, Reddy said, "We believed that decentralisation of capital is much needed in Andhra Pradesh...Government is going to take back the Bill which was introduced earlier. We will introduce a new Bill with no errors."

With the trifurcation legislation withdrawn, Andhra Pradesh, for now, will have only one capital city - Amravati.

The legislation ran into a controversy as several petitions were filed in the Andhra Pradesh High Court challenging the proposed trifurcation of state capital.

Farmers who had given their lands under the pooling scheme in 2015 - when the then CM Chandrababu Naidu had unveiled the mega-capital city plan for Amravati - were at the forefront of the protest against Reddy government's three-capital Bill.

Farmers in Amravati region are poised to incur a loss of around incur a loss of around Rs 33,000 crore if the value of returnable plots is estimated at the lowest possible prices, Times of India reported their counsel Shyam Davan as saying before the high court during a hearing on November 17.

The protesting farmers had also launched a 45-day foot march on November 1 from Amaravati to Tirupati, as they demanded the chief minister to repeal the capital trifurcation law.

Apart from the farmers of Amravati region, the entire opposition bloc including the erstwhile ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had objected to the state government's three-capital plan.