Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu during the inauguration of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) project works, October 19, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
Hyderabad: Relaunching the works for rebuilding the capital city of Amaravati on Saturday, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, announced that the port city of Visakhapatnam will be developed as financial capital while a High Court bench and industries will be set up at Kurnool.
"We will reconstruct Amaravati which is a self-financing project. But some vested interests, particularly those who were at the helm of the affairs earlier, had resorted to mispropaganda that lakhs of crores of rupees will have to be spent for building Amaravati," Chandrababu Naidu said while relaunching the works.
Naidu on Saturday relaunched the works on the construction of the multi storied office building of Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA). The works were stalled for more five years, when the YSRCP was in power between 2019 and 2024.
The Chief Minister stated that 'Vision 2047' is only aimed at developing the state and 'the 420s' cannot understand his vision. With just a call given by him, 29,881 farmers had come forward to donate 34,241 acres in the Amaravati region, Naidu said, adding that the credit of pooling the maximum extent of land, which he claimed was the largest such exercise in the worl,d goes only to the TDP.
Thanking those women who staged a valiant fight against the previous government which created several problems for them, Naidu said that he too joined their fight. "Only a sacred powerful force saved this land where none other than the Prime Minister laid the foundation."
Recalling that the residuary Andhra Pradesh did not have a capital when the state was bifurcated, he said that the state passed through several difficult situations with a 16 per cent budget deficit.
The previous government had simply wasted five crucial years on the pretence that there were no funds, the Chief Minister said, reminding people that Amaravati was already declared as a self-financing capital. "In Hyderabad too we have not spent any funds but were allotted land and supplied water to those who had developed the city following which assets are created there," he said.
Declaring that Amaravati will be developed without spending any funds, the CM said that Amaravati would become a mine for generating employment and for implementing more welfare schemes for the poor. Amaravati has a lot of sanctity which is the capital for the Gods, he said and stated that globally renowned institutions like VIT, SRM and Amrita Universities have already started their operations from Amaravati.
Observing that Xavier School of Management, formerly known as the Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), too will soon have its unit in Amaravati and a law school will also be established, the Chief Minister wished for all the top 10 institutes in the country to open branches in the under-construction capital. "I have already made an appeal to the Centre for a bullet train covering Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Amaravati. The World Bank has already given its consent to sanction loan for Amaravati. I want all the works to be completed on time," Naidu said.
Making it clear that the rivers Vamsadhara, Godavari, Krishna and Pennar will be interlinked, Naidu felt that Amaravati would become the most beautiful city in the entire country. He also lamented that Andhra has to face an additional burden of Rs 7,000 crore due to the negligence of the previous government.
The Centre has already come forward to extend Rs 15,000 crore assistance to the state, he said and noted that residential towers for ministers, MLAs and All India Service officers will soon be completed. Naidu also said that the stature of Andhra Pradesh had grown a lot with the verdict given by the people in the recent elections.
"The TDP, the Jana Sena and the BJP have now come together and we are always thinking about how to save the state. People should now chase out the evil from the state permanently," Naidu concluded.