Supreme court adjourns Amaravati R-5 zone issue to April

VIJAYAWADA: The Supreme Court has adjourned the hearing on petitions filed on the Amaravati R-5 zone issue to April.

Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi on behalf of the AP government sought immediate intervention and inquiry into the petitions.

The bench of Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Dipankar Dutta rejected his appeal and said the final hearing will be held on a Non-Miscellaneous Day in April.

A full bench of the Andhra Pradesh high court stayed the construction of houses in the R-5 zone on August 3 by insisting that a host of issues were to be seriously debated and the state’s right to alter the master plan was inextricably linked to the rights of farmers. The implications of the ‘Amaravati judgment’ were also to be discussed threadbare.

The YSRC government decided to construct more than 50,000 houses for the poor under its Affordable Housing scheme. On 24 July 2023, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy laid the foundation stone for the project at Krishnayapalem Layout in Guntur district at a cost of Rs.1,830 crore.

The plan was to construct the houses on 1,400 acres in 25 layouts. He declared that “Amaravati is for all”, and the beneficiaries of the plots hailed from Vijayawada and Guntur districts.

The local farmers who pooled their lands for the Amaravati capital project during the Telugu Desam government’s term have been opposing the allotment of plots to outsiders by creating a new housing category zone.

The new zone had been created by amending the Andhra Pradesh capital region development authority’s master plan.