VIJAYAWADA: Efforts to resolve the Amaravati and three capitals issues are heading nowhere and appear to be back to square one. The government is planning to execute three capitals plan under which the executive capital would be shifted to Visakhapatnam and judicial capital to Kurnool, leaving Amaravati as the legislative capital.
A speedy verdict on cases pertaining to Amaravati in the High Court is hope for in government circles so as to start the shifting government process on Ugadi. However, the High Court has decided to start hearing the Amaravati case from scratch and postponed the hearing to May 3 thereby dashing the hopes of the state government.
The High Court bench comprising Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and N. Jayasurya decided to start afresh online and physical hearing of the petitions.
According to reports, more than 100 petitions have been filed by farmers from the Amaravati region against the three capital proposal. The pro-Amaravati farmers are conducting protests and agitations continuously for the past 474 days in Velagapudi, Mandadam and Rayapudi demanding continuation of Amaravati as the only state capital.
Political analysts state that restarting the whole process will take a lot of time. They stated that with the appointment of Chief Justice Goswami, some arguments will have to be made again since the bench has been dissolved after the transfer of Justice J.K. Maheswari. They opined that the process would take a couple of months for hearing of a bunch of petitions related to decentralisation of governance and CRDA repeal Acts.
On the other hand, the YSRC leaders buoyed by the successes in gram panchayat, municipalities and municipal corporation elections were considering that this was most appropriate time to shift capitals. Sources pointed out that Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy preferred to go Vizag without legal litigations.
A farmer from Amaravati, Aluri Yugendhar, who filed a petition against the government, said that they had expected that Justice Maheswari would complete the whole process but before that he was transferred.
TD leader G Ramakrishna said that had the previous CJ been there, “We could have had a final judgment by the end of January. Now, the new CJ will have to go through all these records first and familiarise himself with the nomenclature which might take time.”
Minister for municipal administration Botsa Satyanarayana said that the government was ready to shift the executive capital to Visakhapatnam on the day they had decided on the three capitals. He said there was no question of going back on the proposal.
He said that as the case is in the High Court, they are waiting for the courts' verdict. He said that the government would present its arguments in HC in support of three capitals during the hearing.
