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YSRCP MLA writes to Prez, seeks removal of Amaravati as Andhra capital from map
The state government plans to shift the administrative capital to Visakhapatnam and the high court to Kurnool. Amaravati would be the state’s legislative capital as per the proposed plan.
Ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) legislator Dharmana Prasada Rao on Tuesday wrote a letter to President Ramnath Kovind seeking removal of Amaravati as Andhra Pradesh’s capital from the official map even as the proposed move to shift the seat of government to Visakhapatnam has triggered protests.
Rao wrote the previous Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government never notified Amaravati as the state capital. “Therefore, it is unconstitutional and illegal. We request you to kindly direct the Government of India to make necessary changes in the Map of India, as published by the Survey of India,” Rao wrote.
The state government plans to shift the administrative capital to Visakhapatnam and the High Court to Kurnool. Amaravati would be the state’s legislative capital as per the proposed plan.
Rao wrote the letter on a day vehicular traffic on the Chennai-Kolkata national highway was blocked for several hours on Tuesday as thousands of farmers from the Amaravati region staged a sit-in in protest against the proposed shifting of the capital. Protestors attacked YSRCP lawmaker Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy’s car with stones and sticks along the national highway. They even manhandled his gunman before police escorted the legislator to safety.
Reddy blamed TDP workers for attacking him at the behest of their party chief N Chandrababu Naidu.
Thousands of people blocked the highway and broke barricades that police had put up following a call by the Joint Action Committee of Amaravati farmers.
TDP’s general secretary Nara Lokesh was detained as he was on his way to the sit-in site along with his colleagues including former ministers Kollu Ravindra and Devineni Umamaheshwar Rao.
Earlier in the morning, several Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India and TDP leaders, including Guntur lawmaker Galla Jayadev, were placed under house arrest.
“It is a dark day. The government is acting with vengeance against the opposition leaders by provoking the police,” Jayadev said after he was not allowed to come out of his house.
The Centre did not incorporate Amaravati as Andhra’s capital in its revised Indian map released on November 1. It later changed the map again on November 22, showing Amaravati as the state’s seat of power.
In his letter to Kovind, Dharmana Prasada Rao pointed out the earlier government declared Amaravati as the seat of power without considering the Sivaramakrishnan Committee’s report that called a single large capital an unfeasible option.
He wrote the committee recommended against the location of the capital in the Vijayawada-Guntur-Mangalagiri region, saying it would affect the best available agriculture lands, create unemployment in the agriculture sector and was unsuitable for high rises. Rao added the report was neither discussed in the cabinet meeting nor in the assembly.
