Chandrababu Naidu has announced in his election manifesto that he would revive the Amaravati capital city, if his party is voted to power.
Not just Naidu, his entire family, including his brother-in-law Nandamuri Balakrishna and even Bharatiya Janata Party national leaders like Amit Shah and J P Nadda have endorsed Amaravati as the state capital.
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi made fun of the three-capitals concept of YSR Congress party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, saying the latter could not build even a single capital and that the three capitals plan was only to make more money through corruption.
But Naidu’s own relative and Balakrishna’s younger son-in-law M Bharat, who is contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Visakhapatnam, has dealt a rude shock to the TDP and its president by opposing Amaravati as the capital city.
In an interview to a television channel on Tuesday, Bharat said it was not possible to develop Amaravati as the capital city, as it required massive investments. The state is not in a position to invest in Amaravati, he said.
Bharat went on to say that compared to Amaravati, Visakhapatnam has the potential to become the capital city.
“It is a growth engine and has a lot of scope to be developed as capital city in a short time. Amaravati is a 20 years story,” he said.
He said if Visakhapatnam was developed as the capital city, the revenue from the port city could be used to develop Andhra Pradesh more.
“As the debt burden of the state is already high, it is not prudent to take more loans to develop Amaravati as the capital city, which has no resources to generate revenue,” he said.
In a way, Bharat has endorsed the three-capitals concept of Jagan Mohan Reddy, who has declared his steadfast commitment for making Visakhapatnam as the executive capital of the state.
Needless to say, the YSRCP people and I-PAC team has made this video clipping of Bharat interview viral to support their argument for three capital cities for Andhra Pradesh.
