Till recently, there had been speculations that YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy had taken the decision on forming three capitals with executive capital being shifted from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam only after informing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah.
The way the Centre had clarified on the floor of the Lok Sabha that choosing the capital region was entirely a prerogative of the states and the Centre had nothing do with it; besides BJP national spokesman G V L Narasimha Rao’s statement that the Centre would not interfere in the capital matters had lent credence to these speculations.
But the central BJP leaders refuted the talk that Jagan had kept the Centre in loop over capital shift move.
It was only on Wednesday that the chief minister gave a detailed briefing to Modi as to why he had to take the decisions and why it was necessary to have three capitals for a decentralised administration and removing regional imbalances.
He told Modi that the state cabinet had cleared the bills for the formation of three capitals and the state assembly had passed the same. At the same time, he also gave a blow-by-blow account of how the TDP tried to stall the bills in the legislative council taking advantage of the majority it had in the Upper House.
Jagan complained to the Prime Minister that the council was creating hurdles to every decision of his government which had got huge people’s mandate. So, his government took steps to abolish the legislative council, Jagan said and appealed to Modi to direct the Union law ministry to take follow-up measures in the abolition of the council.
The chief minister also wanted the Prime Minister to give instructions to the Union law ministry to take necessary measures for shifting the state high court from Amaravati to Kurnool.
