AP sets the ball rolling with circular

HoDs told to give details of their office space requirements in Vijayawada. The circular comes a day after the State Cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, expressed its resolve to locate the capital of the new State in Guntur-Vijayawada region.

Expediting its efforts to shift part of the administration from Hyderabad, the State government has asked all the departments to submit their requirements in terms of space for relocating them to the ad hoc capital at Vijayawada.

The State government issued a circular on Tuesday directing the Heads of Departments to prepare reports relating to space requirements for housing the directorates and commissionerates under their purview. The HoDs were asked to submit their reports “as early as possible” so that the government could move forward in shifting the key departments out of Hyderabad. The departments are accordingly gearing up to present their requirements to the Government within a week.

The circular comes a day after the State Cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, expressed its resolve to locate the capital of the new State in Guntur-Vijayawada region. It assumes significance in the wake of the Council of Ministers’ decision to set aside the recommendations made by the high-level committee headed by K.C. Sivaramakrishnan which voiced its opposition to locating the capital in the Vijayawada-Guntur stretch.

Decentralised development

According to official sources, the Cabinet had decided to make sure that administrative functions were carried out from Vijayawada while development in terms of setting up of premier institutions, including the IT establishment, would be decentralised to ensure even development of all the regions.

Panel constituted

Accordingly, a Cabinet sub-committee had been constituted to study the formalities required for land acquisition, including holding negotiations with farmers.

Though the Chief Minister was expected to make an announcement on the government’s decision relating to the new capital on Tuesday, the issue had been put off for Thursday. Some departments, including Major Irrigation, Medical and Health and Agriculture had already initiated efforts to shift their functioning premises.

Major Irrigation Minister D. Umamaheswara Rao had already shifted his headquarters to Vijayawada while Health Minister Kamineni Srinivasa Rao expressed his willingness to function from an office located on the NTR Health University premises even as Agriculture Minister P. Pulla Rao had directed the officials concerned to examine the feasibility of locating his headquarters in Guntur.