Andhra Pradesh Minus Telangana: 10 Facts

The people here believe they are getting a raw deal in the split. "There is no capital, no infrastructure, no institutions in Seemandhra," Chandrababu Naidu, chief of the Telugu Desam Party, said last week after seeking central help for the state. He was today sworn in as the new chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, its first after the state was bifurcated for the creation of Telangana.

At the core of the Seemandhra region's discontent is that under the bifurcation, it will share capital Hyderabad with Telangana for 10 years, but will eventually have to pick its own capital. Hyderabad, a gleaming IT hub, has 80-90 per cent of jobs.

With an area of roughly 1.6 lakh square kilometres and a population of over five crore, Andhra Pradesh will be a larger state than Telangana. It gets to keep the port city of Visakhapatnam and Tirupati, the richest temple town in India.

Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Ongole, Kurnool, Rajahmundry and Tirupati are some of the cities in running to be the capital of Andhra Pradesh after 10 years. Towns like Donakonda and Mangalagiri have also been mentioned.

In the assembly elections held along with the general elections, the people of Seemandhra taught the Congress a lesson for pushing to create Telangana. The TDP-BJP alliance won 106 of the 175 assembly seats; the Congress, which has ruled for over four decades in the 57-year-long existence of Andhra Pradesh, could not win a single seat.

Mr Naidu today took oath as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. The swearing-in ceremony was held in Mangalagiri, situated between Vijayawada and Guntur districts.

When the Congress-led Centre had announced special category status for Seemandhra for five years, the BJP, then in opposition, had demanded that the period be extended to 10 years. When Mr Naidu met Mr Modi recently, he reportedly sought that the promise be kept. "Mr Modi and the finance minister (Arun Jaitley) promised to help build the state," Mr Naidu said.

Special category states get financial aid from the Centre configured in a manner that 90 per cent of it is deemed as grant, and the remaining 10 per cent is considered a loan. Special category states also get preferential treatment from the Finance Commission in terms of devolution of central tax revenues.

Among the development incentives that have been offered to the new Andhra Pradesh in the AP Reorganisation Bill 2014, are four major universities, a super specialty hospital-cum-teaching facility along the lines of the All India Institute of Medical Science, an Indian Institute of Management and an Indian Institute of Technology.

One major problem that Mr Naidu's government might not inherit is the problem of Naxalism.While Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam have reported incidents of left-wing extremism in the past, eight of the ten districts worst hit by Naxalism in Andhra Pradesh will become part of Telangana after bifurcation.