Amaravati comes full circle

Amaravati: Has Amaravati, once a dream city and a world class urban conglomeration in making, turned into a dead city and dreadful place?

It looks like so with construction activity coming to a grinding halt and police being deployed at key centres and locations even as agitations by locals against the proposed shifting of the capital city continued on 22nd day on Wednesday.

Interestingly, the situation has reached a stage that even private taxi operators are reluctant to venture into the Greenfield capital, fearing attacks on their vehicles. These fears heightened after convoy of Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy, Government Whip, was attacked on Tuesday.

As the capital city and the agitation against the proposed shifting of it are caught in political crossfire, locals say future looks bleak for them.

"All the construction activity came to a halt in Amaravati. There are no works and no jobs now. How can the poor, who depend on daily labour works for sustenance, survive here?"

asks a woman shopkeeper in Malkapuram village. She refused to reveal her name despite repeated requests, fearing reprisals.

Sandwiched between Velgapudi where AP's makeshift Secretariat is located and another village Mandadam, Malkapuram has 500 houses.

Several of farmers in the village handed over their fertile lands for the construction of the Greenfield capital city that the previous TDP government led by Nara Chandrababu Naidu envisaged.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid foundation stone for Amaravati in October 2015.

"We will land in a big trouble if capital is shifted from here. We are hoping against hope that the Jagan Mohan Reddy government retains the entire capital city here and develops Amaravati as planned," she told The Hans India, sitting in her shop that sells tea, snacks and a few grocery items.

Her business dropped by 75 per cent after the YSRCP government stopped construction works of the capital city and indicated recently that it would shift key administrative machinery to Visakhapatnam which will be developed as the executive capital.

Under the newly proposed plans, AP will have three capitals, two other being Kurnool (judicial capital) and Amaravati (legislative capital).

For all practical purposes, Visakhapatnam will be the main capital in new scheme of things as the Chief Minister will function from the coastal city where Secretariat will also come up.

"The main road in this village used to see traffic jams till recently. It was difficult to pass through Malkapuram then as people going to construction sites used this route.

Visitors and employees heading to Secretariat also take this route. But the road is empty these days.

It is the same with the main roads in other villages in Amaravati, which were abuzz with activity not long ago," says Appala Raju, an auto driver. Raju too saw a significant dip his earnings these days.

Nearly one kilometer west of Malkapuram, a few hundred people, mostly woman, sat in protest under tents at Velgapudi.

They demanded the AP government to drop its plans to shift capital from Amaravati. "We sacrificed our valuable lands in land-pooling scheme for the sake of capital city, thinking that five crore people of Andhra Pradesh will benefit from it.

Our sacrifices will go waste if the capital is shifted from here. We will be on the roads," a farmer lamented.

He found fault with the YS Jagan government for appointing committees to shift the capital.

"Where is the need for appointing committees when there is no demand from other cities for the capital? Have people from Visakhapatnam demanded that capital should be located in their city? No," he said.

M Venkateswara Rao, a farmer from Shakhamuru village near Thullur, pointed out that abandoning Amaravati would be foolish as works on most of the major roads were close to completion.

"Several government buildings have also been completed. So, it's better for AP and its people if the government completes Amaravati even in phases," he said.

Rao, however, warned that agitations in Amaravati would continue until the government drops its plans to relocate the capital.