The story so far: Ever since the State of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated by the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act of 2014, creating the State of Telangana and the State of Andhra Pradesh, the issue of a capital city has always been a contentious issue for A.P. Nara Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) who had come to power in June 2014 with the bifurcation of the State had gone with Amaravati for a capital city. The government then passed the AP CRDA Act, and established the AP Capital Region Development Authority for the purpose of planning, executing, financing and securing the planned development of the capital region development area. A land pooling scheme was offered to the farmers in the capital region and about 33,000 acres were acquired for building the capital.
Why did Mr. Naidu choose Amaravati?
The Sivaramakrishnan Committee appointed in 2014 favoured decentralisation and suggested the Vizag sub-region, as a potential capital space. However, Mr. Naidu was of the opinion that Visakhapatnam was already a developed city and had called it, post-bifurcation, as the ‘financial capital’ of the State. He wanted a greenfield capital in a new region for development.
What changed?
In 2019, YSR Congress defeated TDP to form the government and immediately appointed the G.N. Rao Committee to give a report on the earlier decentralised capital idea. Based on the report, current Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy came up with the idea of making Visakhapatnam the executive capital, Kurnool the judicial capital and Amaravati the legislative capital. In January 2020, the Assembly approved the repealing of the AP CRDA Act and passed the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bill, 2020. However, about 63 farmers approached the A.P. High Court against the new Act and after sustained agitation and court proceedings, in March 2022, the A.P. High Court gave a verdict stating that the State government should follow through with the earlier AP CRDA Act where Amaravati would be the State capital.
Following the verdict, in September 2022, the A.P. Government filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the High Court’s verdict, citing infringement of rights to federalism by the High Court and arguing that it is the State’s prerogative to decide on its capital city.
On November 28, 2022, the Supreme Court stayed the Andhra Pradesh High Court’s order for developing Amaravati as the only capital of the State, saying courts can’t act as a town planner. But it has reserved its final judgment and the hearing process is still on.
What happened now?
On January 31, Mr. Reddy in an investors summit at New Delhi declared that Visakhapatnam will shortly become the capital and that he will also be shifting to the port city. Opposition parties pointed out that it was contempt of court, as the case was still pending in the Apex Court. A senior advocate of A.P. High Court G. Lakshminarayana has written a letter to the Chief Justice of India citing that the CM has grossly violated Section 2(C) of Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 as his remarks amounted to undermining the authority of the Supreme Court, and interfering with the administration of justice with regard to the capital city of A.P.
While the State is primarily fighting on the grounds of infringement of federal structure, a few critical legal aspects such as property rights and contractual obligations to farmers need to be considered.
