Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday announced that the state government will start functioning from Visakhapatnam in September this year.
He said he would be shifting to Visakhaptanam and would be staying there. He made the announcement while addressing a public meeting at Naupada in the Srikakulam district.
The chief minister said he would be moving from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam as part of the decentralization of power.
This is the first time that Jagan Mohan Reddy has specified a time period for shifting the administrative capital to the port city.
Last month, during the Global Investors Summit 2023 in Visakhapatnam, he declared that he would shortly move over to the city.
At the curtain raiser event in Delhi on January 31, the chief minister announced that Visakhapatnam will soon be the state capital.
Subsequently, Finance Minister B. Rajendranath Reddy had stated at another curtain raiser in Bengaluru that the YSRCP government decided on Visakhapatnam as the next capital of Andhra Pradesh. He had reportedly remarked that the state will not have three capitals.
This triggered speculations in political circles that the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government had given up the plan of three state capitals.
It was on December 17, 2019, that Jagan Mohan Reddy announced in the state Assembly that three state capitals will be developed reversing the decision of the previous TDP government to develop Amaravati as the state capital.
The YSRCP government mooted Visakhapatnam as the administrative capital, Kurnool as the judicial capital, and Amaravati as the legislative capital.
However, the protest by farmers of Amaravati over the shifting of the capital and the High Court order directing the government to develop Amaravati as the state capital had delayed the process.
On March 3, 2022, Andhra Pradesh High Court directed the state government to develop Amaravati as the state capital in six months. A bench of three judges had pronounced the judgment on 75 petitions filed by Amaravati farmers and others challenging the government’s move on three capitals.
However, the state government filed an appeal to the Supreme Court. In November last year, the Supreme Court stayed the High Court order saying the court cannot act like a town planner or an engineer.
