Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has announced that Vizag will be the new capital of the state. He was speaking at the International Diplomatic Alliance Meet in New Delhi.
“I am here to invite you to Visakhapatnam, which will be our capital. I will also be shifting to Vizag,” said the Andhra Pradesh CM.
“I invite you and your colleagues to see for yourself how easy it is to do business in Andhra Pradesh,” CM Reddy added.
Earlier, Reddy had made it clear that the future of the state was in decentralised development, proposing Visakhapatnam as the seat of the state administration.
As the headquarters, it will also be the base of the state’s governor, while the legislature will function from Amaravati. He had said the high court would be moved to Kurnool, once the capital, when Andhra was separated from the erstwhile Madras state in 1956.
Distributing the seats of the executive, legislative and judicial functions across the state, Reddy believes, will spur equitable regional development. While there are no parallels to it in the country, his diehard supporters in the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress (YSRC) Party point out that it is inspired by the experiences of multiple capital cities.
By veering to Visakhapatnam nearly 500 km east of Hyderabad, Reddy is poised to give it leverage in transforming the urban agglomeration on the Eastern Seaboard into a bustling metropolis. The city has the potential to evolve in size and stature, eclipsing the capitals of the relatively new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh, and more recently, Telangana.
