Vijayawada: While state government gears for laying foundation stone for construction of capital city at Uddandarayunipalem of Tullur mandal on Thursday, mixed responses have come from the people of Vijayawada who lost the opportunity to host the capital city.
People from a cross section of the society in the city feel that the state government should have developed Vijayawada as the capital city as it has all requisite infrastructures to accommodate the capital city.
The air in Vijayawada is rife with enthusiasm as well as speculations. While on one hand the capital city foundation laying ceremony is trending on the social media sites, there are also people who feel that the present generation may not be able to see the capital city as it requires huge amount of money of and several years to construct the capital city.
However, all is not lost for the city as the administration of the new state is being run from Vijayawada. It may be noted that the state government is availing the existing infrastructure like Medha Towers to run secretariat and has also set up the CM's office and other offices of heads of other departments are also coming up in a phased manner to the city.
Meanwhile, there are a few who ask as to why is the state government not interested in developing the capital city in Vijayawada itself, if the state is being run from here. At this juncture, drawing comparisons with Hyderabad is almost inevitable.
People claim that Hyderabad’s territorial limits were expanded by merging the neighbouring gram panchayats and civic bodies and developing infrastructure like Hi-Tech City in a phased manner.
They raise questions to the government whether such exercise cannot be taken up for the development of Vijayawada. Retired senior officer of Syndicate Bank V. Johnson said, “We have been staying in Vijayawada since 1989. We are closely associated with the city. I wonder as to why the state government intends to develop capital city by taking away lands in the form of land pooling in fertile lands leaving the dry lands which are in possession of the government. We are undergoing hardships every day as vehicular traffic gets halted for movement of VVIPs in the city. We fear that we may not be able to see the new capital city.”
On the other hand, a section of youngsters seem slightly disappointed over the choice of capital city elsewhere instead of Vijayawada. M. Eeswar, who is pursuing B.Tech (CSE) at Sri Venkateswara Engineering College at Chennai said, “I am doubtful that my generation will enjoy the comforts in the upcoming capital city as it takes several years and involves huge amount of money. Though I welcome development of new capital from the scratch as it comes up with new design and modern amenities, but given the precarious financial status of AP, our government should have developed Vijayawada as capital.”
However, there are others who are clicking selfies and posting statuses and tweeting in support of the new capital. Ravi Nayak, BSc final year student from Andhra Loyola College said, “The government should pay more attention on educational and employment opportunities and development of industries and other important aspects. Development of capital city is a big dream project and nobody knows when it gets materialised.”
