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Tughluq revisited? AP govt employees rue yet another capital shift. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/tughluq-revisited-ap-govt-employees-rue-yet-another-capital-shift/article30634270.ece It’s like a never ending journey for us and our families. This has never happened for government staff in any other State so far,” rued a Section Officer at the AP Secretariat in Amaravati, referring to the disruption likely to be caused to her family by the shifting the State’s executive capital to Visakhapatnam. The Andhra Pradesh government recently announced a move toward administrative decentralisation with executive, judiciary and legislative capitals at Visakhapatnam, Kurnool and Amaravati, respectively. This necessitates the relocation of up to 8,000 secretariat staff members and 33 department heads under various categories from Amaravati. The total strength of AP government employees is 4.5 lakh.  For Andhra Pradesh, this will be the fourth capital change since its ...

Is Jagan Following In Tughlaq's Footsteps By Shifting Capital? When the Andhra Pradesh CM, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, swept to power, opposition parties coined a moniker to critique his policies - Tughlaq CM. He was supposed to emulate the Delhi emperor by subjecting people to unnecessary pain through irrational decisions. However, none would've expected him to replicate Tughlaq's actual historical blunders. The emperor was notorious for shifting capitals from Delhi to Daulatabad for reasons of better administration and securing himself from Mongol invasions.  Now, the proposed shifting of capital from Amaravati to Vizag is a move whose political, organizational, and developmental motives are mired in confusion and propaganda. Investments in manufacturing and service sector to be developed at Amaravati and Vizag (LuLu group and Adani Group among others) stand withdrawn or cancelled. Despite the mantra of 3 capitals, Vizag will be de facto capital as the all-powerful CM...

Andhra’s 3 capitals: A Tughlaqian idea The Andhra Pradesh government’s plan to build three capitals for the state is wrong and unwise. It will go against the interests of the people. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy is known for his vindictiveness and arbitrariness and for lack of political maturity and sagacity. Ever since he came to power last year, he has been busy reversing the decisions of the previous government of Chandrababu Naidu and harassing him and his associates. The decision to go in for three capitals is part of the continuing project to undo Naidu’s decisions. After losing Hyderabad to Telangana on partition of the state, Naidu had embarked on building a greenfield capital at Amaravati, not far from Vijayawada. Land was acquired and work on development of the new city had started, and now there is a change of plan.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>According to the new plan, the state will have an executive capital at Visakhapatnam, a judicial capital at Kurnool and a l...

Why wasn’t amaravati opposed then? The proposal of the government to have three capital cities -- one for Legislature, one for Executive and another for the Judiciary - based on the recommendations of the GN Rao Committee has not only led to confusion but also created a life and death problem for over 25,000 farmers and their families, who gave up their lands to the tune of 33,000 acres for the capital city. The Sivaramakrishnan Committee had recommended against locating the captial in VGTM region, particularly along the river bank, where Amaravati is located, as there is intense agriculture activity and the land is multi-crop growing fertile land. But the then chief minister Chandrababu Naidu declared the region as the capital city. In the five years since State bifurcation, 33,000 acres was taken and the farmers had decided to sacrifice their lands for a greater cause. They had hoped that the value of the developed plots given to them in lieu of the agriculture land they gav...

A Tale of Two states A tale of two states: As hopes fade for Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh scores a self-goal It was said that Telangana was a rich state with poor people and Andhra was a poor state with rich people. However, it is Andhra Pradesh which now looks and sounds like a failing state, unable to choose a capital or stick with a capital that has already been chosen. During the last stages of the agitation for a new state of Telangana, questions were raised about the stability of the new state. One argument was that the new state would be wreaked by Left-wing violence as there was a substantial presence of former Naxalites among the agitators. It was also said that senior bureaucrats might prefer to stay on with Andhra Pradesh and Telangana would become weak and unstable, and might not be able to tackle the Naxal menace. Smaller states, they said, were more vulnerable to violent non-state actors. Moreover, it was predicted that since the new state of Telangana was built...

Memorandum from California NRIs to The President of India.                                                                                                                                        December 30, 2019 San Ramon,                      ...

Why Killing Amaravati, a National Disaster? - Sai Nuthakki Amaravati, a green field city initiated for the first time in 60 years in India, as a new capital of Andhra Pradesh has a tremendous potential to become a national asset and a crown jewel of urban India if developed as planned. It is going to be a first city in India to compete with other south east Asian majors like Singapore and Hong Kong with world class infrastructure, near zero pollution, availability of natural & human resources to attract global investments and talent. Today all the major cities in India are going thru a massive pressure on their infrastructure to support growing population migration towards these cities. It is causing urban chaos with dangerous pollution levels, lack of affordable housing, clogged transportation networks, lack of water, power and other basic amnesties for majority population impacting people’s basic living conditions apart from bleeding national GDP. A world class city l...