A proposed bullet train between Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Amaravati, restarting stalled projects, and the interlinking of the Vamsadhara, Godavari, Krishna, and Pennar rivers. These are some of the major projects that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu announced Saturday as he brought his pet scheme of developing Amaravati as the state capital out of the cold storage, where it had been for the last five years.
Announcing plans to resume the ambitious project, Naidu said that Amaravati would be reconstructed as a “self-financing project” and that the World Bank had “already given its consent to sanction a loan” for the project.
The project, which had been announced by Naidu’s government during its previous tenure, had been kept on the backburner between 2019 and 2024 under former Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
“The capital city of Amaravati will come to life very soon,” Naidu said. “Some vested interests, particularly those who were at the helm of the affairs earlier, had resorted to false propaganda that lakhs of crores of rupees will have to be spent for building Amaravati”.
Naidu also unveiled plans to develop the port city of Visakhapatnam as the state’s financial capital, saying that a high court bench and industries will be set up at Kurnool.
In his speech, Naidu said that his government’s “Vision-2047” plan is only aimed at developing the state and “the 420s” cannot understand his vision. “At just one call, 29,881 farmers came forward to donate 34,241 acres in the Amaravati region,” the CM said.
He also accused the previous YSR government of having “wasted five crucial years in the guise that there are no funds”, adding that Amaravati will be developed without spending any funds and that it would be a “a mine for generating employment and for implementing more welfare schemes for the poor”.
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Calling Amaravati “the capital for the Gods”, Naidu said renowned institutions like VIT, SRM, and Amrita University had already started their operations here, while others such as the Xavier School of Management will follow suit soon. He also said residential towers for ministers, MLAs and All India Service officials will be completed soon at Amaravati.
“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 a loan for Amaravati. I want all the works to be completed on time,” he further said, adding that the Centre has already come forward to extend Rs 15,000 crore assistance to the state.
