Andhra Pradesh High Court recently asked the state government to shelve their plan of having three state capitals and go back to the plan of the old government of developing Amravati as their new capital. Now the story starts from 2014 when Telangana state was formed and the city of Hyderabad was officially allotted to Telangana as their capital means Andhra Pradesh within the next 10 years had to build a new capital for themselves. The last government led by Chief Research Chandra Babu Naidu announced that we will be building our capital in Amravati. In 2019, however, Andhra Pradesh saw a new government come to power and the new government announced that we will not have our capital at Amravati only. Rather, we would have a concept of decentralised development. The new government said that we will have three capitals instead, first Amravati, which will act as a legislative capital, so it would have the state legislative assembly, then Vishakhapatnam as the executive capital, so it would have all the offices of the minister, Chief Minister, Governor etc and Kurnool that will be the judiciary capital that is the High Court of the state.
Now ever since the state government of Andhra Pradesh came up with this plan there has been a lot of debate around this and a lot of people have opposed the idea, especially the farmers who had surrendered their land to the large government for building of the capital of Amravati. In fact, these farmers were the ones who actually went to the state high court asking the High Court to intervene and asking the state government to go back to the original plan and this is the high court verdict on the same petition. The State High Court has said that the government cannot all of a sudden abandon the project to develop Amaravati since almost 33,000 acres of land has been given up by the farmers and the government has already spent over 15,000 crore rupees in developing the area. In short, the High Court said two things. Number one, if you have to split the capital the state government does not have the power to do that. The state government cannot decide that we want to have more than one capital. Secondly, the High Court said that the farmers who willingly gave away the land to the last government gave away the land in the hope that Amravati will now develop into the centre of the Andhra Pradesh state. It will be a bustling metropolitan city and when the state government gives them the redevelop plots back those flats will now have a much larger value. Farmers will now be living in the state capitol and that was a hope underway the farmers had given their land to the last government.
So now going back on the promise means that you are taking away this dream of the farmers because of which they had given you their land. That is why the High Court of the state has said that we are giving the state just six months of time, within six months give us a development plan for Amravati only as alone capital and not these three capitals for three different parts of the governance. The government, on the other hand, has said that our idea behind having multiple capitals was that we needed to decentralise governance and make sure that fruits of development are in all parts of the state. Now, usually you see most of the states in India, the state capital is the one where most of the investment comes in. You can take an example of Patna in Bihar, you can take an example of Lucknow in UP, you can take an example of almost every state in India, barring a few, where capitals are the ones that get most of the development while the other cities of the state get neglected.
The State Government is saying that we are doing this so that the fruits of development are spread across the state and not just in one single city. However, the High Court did not accept this. The High Court has said that just because the decision of Amravati to be made the capital was taken by the last government doesn't mean that you can come and overrule that decision because you don't want to give the credit to the last government. Now, these are the three cities which were proposed by the new government to be made as a capital of the state that is Kurnool, Amravati and Vishakhapatnam and that is why the government is saying that we want development to be spread to almost all parts of the state and not just restricted to Amravati.
But just a bit of history about how this three capital idea came into being. In 2020, the State Assembly passed a bill called the Andhra Pradesh decentralisation and inclusive development of all regions Act, which said that there will be three seats of governance that is legislative seat, executive seat and the judicial capital. As I said, the idea was to give fillip to development in all parts of the state rather than just one single part. The governor of the state also gave his assent to the bill in July 2020 and thus everyone thought that the fate of the three capitals is sealed. However, the farmers who had given their land to the last government for building Amravati as a capital were not happy. They were the ones who challenge this decision of the government in the High Court. Now this petition was filed in 2020 itself but the reason why it got delayed was that after a few hearings, the Chief Justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court was transferred and a new Chief Justice came in. So when the new Chief Justice came in, he made a new bench and the matter was heard from the scratch once again and that is where the judgement of the Andhra Pradesh High Court got a bit delayed.
Rather than going into who is right and who is wrong let us also discuss the idea of having more than one capital. Itdoes exist in India in more than one states. For example, Maharashtra apart from Mumbai also considers Nagpur as a part time capital since the city holds winter sessions of the state legislative assembly. Himachal also has a couple of capital Shimla and Dharamshala, while the government runs from Shimla in the summers it shifts to Dharamshala in the winters, earlier when Jammu Kashmir used to be a state, they also used to have two capitals, that is Srinagar and Jammu depending upon the seasons. Now, some of the arguments given against the idea of having more than one capital is number one, it will require a lot of logistics, see, although there are three parts of government, judiciary, executive and legislative but their functions are interconnected especially in the parliamentary form of government where members of legislature are also ministers. So for those people who are ministers and who are MLAs or MLC also, for them to travel from the capital of the legislature to capital of the executive it would require a lot of time and a lot of costs and that is why it is not really something that is an ideal situation for any state in India. Also, setting up three capitals means a lot of logistics would have to be sorted out means a lot of expenditure would have to be done and that is why we might have a problem that this particular idea might not translate on the ground in the way that the CM is hoping for and that is why many people believe that while the state government has the right to approach the Supreme Court and they most probably will it was never really a great idea in the beginning itself.
