"Crossing all the legal hurdles, we will go ahead," said Mr Naidu (File)
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday vowed to start rebuilding Amaravati by restoring investor confidence and reconstructing its brand image, after crossing all the hurdles set in its path allegedly by the erstwhile YSRCP regime.
Releasing a white paper on the state of the greenfield capital city conceptualised during the TDP government between 2014 and 2019, the Chief Minister said he will tell everything about Amaravati to the Centre and move in a fast and time-bound manner to execute it.
"Rebuilding Amaravati would have already started from yesterday and officials were given instructions. Crossing all the legal hurdles, we will go ahead," said Mr Naidu, addressing a press conference at the secretariat.
He observed that reconstruction of Amaravati will go ahead with the existing masterplan but will incorporate modern advancements.
He highlighted that Singapore had prepared three master plans for Amaravati, which included capital region concept master plan, capital city master plan and seed capital area detailed master plan.
As per the plans developed by Singapore, Amaravati would house a sports city, government city, tourism city, finance city, justice city, knowledge city, media city, health city and electronics city, nine in total.
Among the several reasons for choosing Amaravati as the capital city, which has a history of 2,300 years, the TDP supremo said it was due to its central location and equidistant from the three extremities of the state were some.
According to the CM, Amaravati, a self-financed project, had witnessed the largest land pooling exercise in the world, encompassing a commitment of 34,400 acres of land by 29,966 farmers.
With a total project cost of Rs 51,687 crore, Mr Naidu said tenders were called for works worth Rs 41,171 crore and bills were paid to the tune of Rs 4,319 crore in the earlier TDP regime.
He alleged that the previous YSRCP government had halted all work related to the construction of Amaravati between 2019 and 2024, leaving dues worth Rs 1,269 crore thus far.
Hitting out at his predecessor, the CM alleged the YSRCP government had done everything in its power to destroy Amaravati, withdrawing land acquisition notification for 1,197 acres and ending annuity for 2,903 farmers.
Further, he observed that welfare pensions for 4,442 families in the capital region were deprived, Norman Foster contract was cancelled, which was the master architect for the Amaravati Government Complex (AGC).
He also accused the previous government of cancelling World Bank funding to the tune of USD 300 million and blocked the Central government grant, among other alleged tactics to stall the project.
Due to the disruption, he said Amaravati suffered a systematic destruction in the past five years, which extended to damaged roads, unfinished buildings, negative credit rating impact on Amaravati bonds and others.
As a result, Mr Naidu said the city suffered cost escalations, demobilisation of men and machinery, loss of tax revenue, material theft and several other issues.
According to Mr Naidu, had work relating to the Amaravati project gone ahead as planned, up to one lakh people would have been residing in it by now, seven lakh jobs could have been created and Rs 10,000 crore state taxes would have been realised by the government, including wealth generation across the state.
Considering the battered brand image of Amaravati, Mr Naidu said the Herculean task of restoring investor confidence and resurrecting the economy lies ahead for him.
Mr Naidu said his vision is to create a world class capital which boosts the image of the state and improves the confidence of the people.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)