Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said on Wednesday that he would rebuild Amaravati after reconstructing its “brand image” and crossing all hurdles, including legal hurdles, set up by the YSCRP regime.
Releasing a white paper on Amaravati on Wednesday, the Chief Minister said that he also would restore the investors’ confidence before constructing the capital city.
He said that he would brief the Centre about his plans to rebuild Amaravati and move in a time-bound manner to execute it.
“We will work on the existing master plan, but add more elements to it,” the Telugu Desam Party chief said.
He further said that Singapore had prepared three master plans for the capital city, according to which, it would house a total of nine regions, including a government city, health city, finance city, sports city, electronics city, justice city, tourism city and knowledge city.
The Chief Minister said that some of the reasons for choosing Amaravati as the capital, which was previously the capital of the Satavahana dynasty and has a history of over 2,000 years, is because it is located in the central point of the state.
Talking about the land acquisition process for the greenfield capital, Naidu said that it was done through land pooling.
He said that it was the largest land pooling exercise in the world, where a total of 34,400 acres of land was donated by 29,966 farmers voluntarily for the project. “The World Bank presented it as a case study,” he said.
The Chief Minister said that out of the total project cost of Rs 51,687 crore, tenders were called for works worth Rs 41,171 crore and bills were paid to the tune of Rs 4,319 crore during the earlier TDP government.
Naidu claimed that the former chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy-led previous YSRCP government had halted works in the Amaravati from 2019 to 2024, which left dues worth Rs 1,269 crore.
He further alleged that the YSRCP had done everything it could to destroy Amaravati, by withdrawing land acquisition notification for 1,917 acres, terminating annuity for 2,903 farmers and cancelling welfare pensions for 4,442 farmers.
Naidu said that the farmers had staged a protest against the previous government for over 1,630 days against this. “They (farmers) have made a lot of sacrifices and we will remember it,” he said.
The Chief Minister claimed that the YSRCP government had cancelled World Bank funding of worth $300 million and had blocked the central government grant of Rs 1,000 crore.
He said that Jagan Mohan Reddy’s government “systematically weakened and destroyed” the project, due to which it suffered cost escalations, demobilisation of men and machinery, loss of tax revenue, among others.
The Chief Minister added that the government would now focus on restoring investor confidence and resurrecting the economy of the state.
