Dream capital stuck in nightmare!

A cloud of uncertainty is hanging on Amaravati capital, the brainchild of former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who never spoke a word against the setting up of capital at Amaravati, has however, expressed several reservations over the way the capital was decided and the procedure involved in acquiring lands from farmers and the alleged insider trading.

The capital city works were in progress till Jagan assumed office on May 30 this year, after getting a thumping majority in the general elections.

Soon afterwards, he dealt a first master stroke to the capital city by giving 'Work Stop Order' in the first week of June. All the companies, which have been engaged till then, were forced to stop the ongoing works.

Construction of buildings like permanent secretariat, High Court, Assembly were also commenced by N Chandrababu Naidu, but they were stopped by the new government, claiming that all the contracts were given in a corrupt manner at high prices.

Then the next stroke to the Amaravati from the Jagan government was withdrawal of financial assistance of World Bank for the project of more than Rs 5,000 crore.

When the Union government asked the state government to give its opinion on availing World Bank's financial assistance, the state government maintained silence forcing the WB dropping the proposal.

The state government also cancelled an agreement with Singapore Consortium for development of core capital.

The third major blow is constitution of an Expert Committee on the capital along with the development of urban areas in the state.

The state government also constituted another committee for Cabinet alone, to probe into the corruption allegations in land pooling and quoting high prices for capital works.

Meanwhile, the statements from the Cabinet ministers, mainly municipal administration minister Botcha Satyanarayana sowed confusion among farmers who gave lands to the capital construction.

On the other hand, the farmers started filing petitions in the High Court, demanding construction of capital city as promised.

However, finance minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy's recent statement made it clearly that not big ticket works, but welfare of the poor and downtrodden and their immediate needs were the state government.