Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday announced that the state government will start functioning from Visakhapatnam from September this year.He said he would be shifting to Visakhaptanam and would be staying there. He made the announcement while addressing a public meeting at Naupada in Srikakulam district.
The chief minister said he would be moving from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam as part of the decentralisation of power.This is the first time that Jagan Mohan Reddy has specified a time period for shifting the administrative capital to the port city.
Last month, during the Global Investors Summit 2023 in Visakhapatnam, he had declared that he would shortly move over to the city.At the curtain raiser event in Delhi on January 31, the chief minister had announced that Visakhapatnam will soon be the state capital.
Subsequently, Finance Minister B. Rajendranath Reddy had stated at another curtain raiser in Bengaluru that the YSRCP government decided on Visakhapatnam as the next capital of Andhra Pradesh. He had reportedly remarked that the state will not have three capitals.
This had triggered speculations in political circles that the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government had given up the plan of three state capitals.It was on December 17, 2019 that Jagan Mohan Reddy had announced in the state Assembly that three state capitals will be developed reversing the decision of the previous TDP government to develop Amaravati as the state capital.
The YSRCP government mooted Visakhapatnam as administrative capital, Kurnool as judicial capital and Amaravati as legislative capital.However, the protest by farmers of Amaravati over shifting of the capital and the High Court order directing the government to develop Amaravati as the state capital had delayed the process.
On March 3, 2022, Andhra Pradesh High Court had directed the state government to develop Amaravati as the state capital in six months. A bench of three judges had pronounced the judgment on 75 petitions filed by Amaravati farmers and others challenging the government's move on three capitals.
However, the state government filed an appeal in the Supreme Court. In November last year, the Supreme Court stayed the High Court order saying the court cannot act like a town planner or an engineer.