Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said on Saturday the government would declare land not given for pooling for the construction of capital city Amaravati or could not be taken over through the Land Acquisition Act as greenbelt to prevent its use for non-agricultural purposes.
The officials of the A.P.-Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) would, however, try to take identified land from the willing farmers under the pooling method and, if it did not work out, go for LA.
If the owners refused to part with their holds even after the invocation of the LA Act, their land would be declared as greenbelt, the CM asserted, when CRDA Commissioner Cherukuri Sreedhar told him at a review meeting that the problems in obtaining land were being overcome one by one in Undavalli, Penumaka and a few other villages.
On the capital city designs, Mr. Sreedhar told the CM that the Foster + Partners had communicated they would submit the master plan for the core government area next week. A viewing tower was planned to be built on the central axis between the Legislature Complex and the banks of River Krishna.
Watching presentations on the construction of the campuses of the SRM University, Vellore Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Design and other institutions of higher learning, Mr. Naidu said awareness should be spread on the entry of reputed universities into Amaravati so that the talented students would get the best education not too far from their homes.
A delegation of McKinsey and Company told the CM that Amaravati could be transformed into a city that ranks high on the happiness index by increasing the economic activity, fostering well-being and community engagement and delivering good governance and sustainable growth. They pointed out that Amaravati had the potential to have a GDP equivalent to that of a metropolitan city (about ₹1.20 lakh crore) and provide 1.5 million jobs by 2050.
After watching a presentation by Amaravati Development Corporation Chairperson D. Lakshmi Parthasarathy on a botanical garden–cum–park being developed at Sakhamuru, Mr. Naidu appreciated the idea to shape it into Amaravati’s own Disneyland in about 250 acres.
