Amaravati Unstoppable

Vijayawada : “An environmentally sustainable, Greenfield capital city as originally designed by Singapore will be developed in a phased manner. It will be developed as one of the top five capital cities in the world,” Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said on Wednesday.

Releasing the white paper on Amaravati, Naidu said that the capital was named after its historical importance during the Satavahana rule and vowed to rebuild by restoring investor-confidence and reconstructing its brand image, after crossing all the hurdles set in its path by the erstwhile YSRCP regime.

Naidu, who would be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Ministers on Thursday, will present the status report on Amaravati to the Centre and seek their help and cooperation in executing the capital city reconstruction project ahead in a time-bound manner.

He said restoring the confidence among investors is a major task as the brand image of AP had taken a severe beating due to the misadventure of the YSRCP government which had chased away the Singapore consortium and ruined the capital. Apart from that the government will also now have to discuss the legal and constitutional measures that need to be taken to ensure that in future no one attempts to change the capital again.

Replying to a question, Naidu said in recent history there are no instances of any CM trying to change the capital. “Only mental fellows will do it. How to prevent such mental acts will have to be examined,” he said. Naidu said AP should become a perfect case study for the world to know what happens if one tries to change the capital.

He said before laying the foundation stone, he had gathered earth and water from various sources, including rivers and temples from across the country and sprayed it in the capital region only to prevent evil eyes. Probably that saved the capital city despite all out efforts by the previous government to bury the capital, Naidu said. He said at this stage he cannot give a timeline as to when the capital city would be ready. But he said it will have 51% green space like no other city. It will be built on 217 sq km area and will have nine hubs, including finance, justice city, knowledge city, media city, health city and electronics city. It will be like what Noida and Gurgaon are to Delhi.