The agitation by farmers of Amaravati has entered 50th day on Wednesday. The agitation has been going on ever since YSR Congress party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy announced in the state assembly that there is a possibility of forming three capitals for the state – executive capital at Visakhapatnam, legislative capital at Amaravati and judicial capital at Kurnool.
Much water has flown in Krishna river since then. The Jagan Mohan Reddy government has gone too far ahead in his mission. He got the report of experts committee headed by retired IAS officer G N Rao and that of Boston Consulting Group; constituted a high-power committee of ministers that endorsed the findings of the two expert committee reports and recommended formation of three capitals.
The Jagan cabinet approved the two draft bills – one to repeal APCRDA Act and another on decentralisation of administration with creation of three capitals. The government conducted a special session of assembly where these two bills were passed easily, but they got stuck up in the state legislative council due to lack of adequate numbers for the ruling party.
The TDP managed to stall the bills in the council by invoking Rule 71 first and then a day later, forced legislative council chairman to refer the bills to the select committee. Naturally angry with it, the Jagan government introduced a resolution in the state assembly abolishing the legislative council altogether.
The agitation of farmers which has started tentatively in the beginning has picked up later with the entry of TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu and his party leaders. Long marches, bike rallies, dharnas, road blocks, shutdowns, Chalo Assembly rallies, stone pelting, lathi charges, arrests, preventive detentions, court cases etc, followed during the agitation in the last 50 days. The BJP, Jana Sena and other parties, too, expressed their solidarity to the agitation.
The farmers and the TDP leaders have been making all efforts to stall the shifting of administrative capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam but nothing seemed to be working out for them. As a last resort, they tried to influence the Centre to rein in the Jagan government.
But with the Central government on Tuesday categorically making it clear that deciding the location of the capital city is the state’s prerogative, thereby indicating that it cannot interfere in the matter, it is now certain that Jagan will have the last laugh on the capital issue.
The pro-TDP media which has been giving wide coverage to the agitation of Amaravati farmers all these 50 days, continued with their coverage on Wednesday, too. But they seem to have reconciled to the fact that the shifting of capital is inevitable.
Yet, they tried to give some hope to the farmers that the Centre talked about only “capital” and not “capitals” and that the Centre has acknowledged only Amaravati as the capital city as it was notified way back in 2015.
Sakshi gave the factual position as stated by the Centre, while Andhra Jyothy pushed it inside, refusing to acknowledge the Centre’s decision.
Among the other stories, Sakshi gave wide coverage to Jagan’s letter to the Centre asking for special category status apart from arguments of the government in high court on English medium schools.
Andhra Jyothy carried a second lead story defending “insider trading” in Amaravati by arguing that those bought the lands were genuine persons despite having white ration cards. It pointed out that 95 per cent of the people of the state have white ration cards.
Eenadu carried a report on the state government’s status report on Polavaram project stating that 57 per cent of the works were completed. It also published an anchor story on the government’s proposal to set up three medical universities in three zones of the state.