The city of Amaravati formally became the capital of Andhra Pradesh on Monday after President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Amendment Act.
The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on April 1 and by the Rajya Sabha on April 2.
The development marked the fulfilment of a “long-cherished dream”, said Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday.
“This is a victory for my people of Andhra Pradesh, especially my farmers of Amaravati,” Naidu said in a social media post in which he expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all MPs who supported the bill and citizens.
The new law amends Section 5 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act to replace the words “and there shall be a new capital” with “and Amaravati shall be the new capital”. It also clarifies that Amaravati includes areas notified under the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority Act.
The project to make Amaravati the state capital had begun in 2014, when Telangana was carved out of undivided Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad was made the joint capital of the two states for ten years. The Andhra Pradesh Cabinet, in September 1, 2014, approved Amaravati as the site for the new capital, and Naidu announced the decision on October 22, 2015.
However, the process of developing Amaravati as the capital had come to a halt when the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress came to power in 2019. In 2020, the YSR Congress government proposed making Vishakhapatnam the executive capital, Amaravati the legislative capital and Kurnool the judicial capital.
However, the Andhra Pradesh High Court ruled, in March 2022, that Amaravati alone should be the state capital.
When the amendment bill was debated in Parliament earlier this month, the Telugu Desam Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress supported the legislation. While the Congress supported making Amaravati the capital of Andhra Pradesh, it also called for the state to be given special status.
The YSR Congress, however, had argued that the law would be meaningless unless farmers’ interests were protected and a clear timeline was set for giving them compensation for land acquired from them.
Also read: They gave up farmland for new Andhra capital. Now they are crippled with uncertainty
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