Jagan govt moves SC challenging Andhra HC decision on 3 capitals

YSR Congress President and the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.

The YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government on Saturday moved the Supreme Court against the March 2022 judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court that ordered the state government against dumping the Greenfield capital city project at Amaravati.

The Andhra government has filed a special leave petition before the Apex Court challenging the judgment of the High Court that held that the state does not have the legislative competence to shift the capital to any area other than Amaravati which was notified under the AP Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) Act.

The High Court had on March 3 ordered the Reddy government to develop Amaravati as the capital city as per the master plan and not to use the 33,000 acres of land pooled from the farmers by the erstwhile Chandrababu Naidu government for any purpose other than building the capital city.

The High Court had also held that the previous government headed by Naidu had promised irrevocable guarantees while entering into a development agreement with the farmers of Amaravati. Accordingly, the high court held that the Reddy government has no right to use the pooled land for purposes other than building a capital city at Amaravati.

The Reddy government on Saturday said it was committed to decentralisation of governance and trifurcation of capitals and claimed that it has the legislative competence under the Constitution to shift the capital.

Months after coming to power in May 2019, the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government decided to scrap the unified Greenfield capital city project at Amaravati that was already halfway built. In its place, the Reddy government proposed developing three capitals – executive capital at Visakhapatnam and judicial capital at Kurnool, while confining Amaravati to administrative capital.

When farmers of Amaravati who parted thousands of acres of their fertile agricultural lands for the capital city construction moved the High Court against the decision of the Reddy government to shift the capital city, the court directed the government to construct and develop Amaravati capital city within six months as per the terms and conditions of development agreement-cum-irrevocable general power of attorney entered into with the farmers.

On Saturday, the Reddy government, while moving the Apex Court, said: “it would be destructive of the federal structure of the Constitution” if a state that was reorganised through central legislation under the Constitution was held to be without power to reorganise its capital.

Telangana was carved out of the erstwhile unified Andhra Pradesh in June 2014 with Hyderabad as its capital city and the residual Andhra Pradesh was left without a capital city.

The Reddy government said it was challenging the findings of the High Court since the CRDA Act, which was purportedly legislated as a delegated power from the Union government, did not follow the prescriptions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.

Arguing that the location of the capital city at Amaravati was contrary to the recommendations of the committee appointed under the central Act, the Reddy government said a decision taken by a delegate (CRDA) in contrary to the provisions of the Central Act cannot be affirmed by the High Court.