Hyderabad: June 8, 2014. Nara Chandrababu Naidu left Hyderabad for a location near Guntur city to be sworn-in as Chief Minister of residuary Andhra Pradesh. The ceremony over, he flew back to Hyderabad. Reason: There was no Chief Minister’s seat for him to sit or an office to do governance, around the Vijayawada-Guntur cities. After the AP Reorganisation Act came into being, things were in a flux. Out of the blue, things needed to start from scratch for residuary Andhra Pradesh. The division mandated AP to share space in Hyderabad for 10 years even as the city was declared the capital of the new Telangana state. During the period, it was for AP to locate, plan and construct its own capital city; with central help, of course.
Mr Naidu wanted to move things with god speed. His ambition was to fashion a world-class capital city in Amaravati, the site identified for the new capital on the banks of River Krishna. But, while his dreams had no limits, money was a constraint. Two years later, on May 17, 2016, Chief Minister Mr Naidu observed at a media meet in Delhi after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he being one of the senior-most politicians and administrators was being made to beg for funds and development projects for the new state from the Centre. Also, he stressed, bifurcation of the state was done by the then Congress-led UPA government in an unscientific manner. His success, or the lack of it, in getting funds and projects is a barometer for the performance of the two-year rule of the TD government headed by him in AP.
An experienced politician like Mr Naidu, who had earlier served as Chief Minister for nine years in undivided AP, was able to gauge the public mood against his present government, that’s still operating from Hyderabad. To administer a state located 200-km away from the common capital presented its own problems. The process to shift it to the new capital, Amaravati, is programmed to materialise by June 27. As mr Naidu himself regretted, he should have started moving to Amaravati in a year’s time after bifurcation.
As everybody admits, AP suffered a lot than the newly formed Telangana State in the process of bifurcation. Other states were bifurcated in the past on demands raised by some territory. The region now forming into AP did not ask for a separate state, but a decision was thrust upon it, and it still has to go the whole hog out to create a new capital and infrastructure thereof from scratch and slush. Fact is also that the erstwhile united AP rulers made it a policy to develop Hyderabad as an international destination for investment, FDI etc.
This was done at the cost of developing other cities and towns in the state. Mr Naidu himself as CM in the previous stints not only pushed but also perfected such an agenda. With Hyderabad remaining with Telangana, it was now a washout for AP. The present AP, that has 13 districts, is however not a new concept. It was formed into a state when Andhrites wanted to separate themselves from the United Madras Province in 1953. But Andhra State was in existence for just three years and it merged with Telangana to form the AP state in the first states reorganisation on linguistic grounds in 1956. Some 58 years later; and over to 2014. For the newly formed Telangana State, everything was the same as before.
