Cabinet, BAC and Assembly on January 20

Amaravati: The AP cabinet postponed to January 20, from January 17. Unlike other cabinet meetings, it has great significance as it is going to take makeshift decisions including on three capitals.

On the same day, January 20, the state government is going to hold a special Assembly session to discuss the decentralized development through three capitals. After concluding the Cabinet Meeting, there will be a Business Advisory Committee meeting and then the regular business of the Legislative Assembly.

Meanwhile, the High Power Committee will hold another meeting. It will be the fourth meeting of HPC. It is scheduled to meet on January 17. The HPC is constituted to suggest a detailed strategy for the development of the entire state by studying the reports of GN Rao Committee and Boston Consulting Group and others apart from taking views of the public on the proposed three capitals.

The HPC will also suggest the government on how to do justice to the farmers who surrendered their agriculture lands to the government for construction of the Amaravati capital under the Land Pooling Scheme.

It is known that the HPC already invited the public and capital region farmers to submit their grievances to the APCRDA by January 17.

Sources in the secretariat informed that, as there will be holidays on January 18 and 19, the government postponed the cabinet meeting from January 17 to 20 in view of the proposed fourth meeting of HPC on January 17.

Further, the sources added that the government is contemplating to bring at least four crucial bills in the special Assembly Session, they including AP Decentralized Development Bill, 2020, and AP Capital Region Development Authority (Repeal) Bill, 2020, AP English Medium in school education Bill, 2020 and the AP SC STs Commissions Bill, 2020. The last two bills, including English medium and SC-ST commissions bill was rejected by the TDP in the AP Legislative Council in the last Assembly session, hence the government is bringing them again for the second time. If the Legislative Assembly will pass these two bills now, the bills will get automatically passed even though the Council will reject them for the second term.

At the same time, the YSRCP leaders have been discussing the possibility of hardships in passing the bills related to three capitals and CRDA in this special session. The TDP could easily manage to defeat any bill in the Council and could make delay. But, the government has been determined to shift the Executive Capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam in this month itself. Probably, the shifting of Executive capital will commence from January 24 onwards, observed the sources. In these circumstances, the approval of the decentralized plan of government in the Assembly would have great importance.

Though the Legislative Assembly will commence on January 20, the Legislative Council will commence on January 21. There will be no question hour in the Assembly on the first day of its discussion, informed the sources in the Assembly. They further explained that the government, at present only requested to hold the regular business.