As the judgement of the Andhra Pradesh high court declaring Amaravati as the only capital of the state and stating that the legislature has no competence to shift or divide it has brought the situation back to square one, the comments made by state municipal administration minister Botsa Satyanarayana have added more confusion to the controversy.
At a time when people of Andhra Pradesh have virtually forgotten the fact that Hyderabad is the common capital for both the Telugu states, Botsa suddenly brought to the fore the argument that it is Hyderabad, which is the capital of the state and not Amaravati.
In the last seven years, neither the ruling YSR Congress party nor its president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy ever talked about Hyderabad being the common capital of the state.
In fact, till Jagan came to power in Andhra Pradesh in May 2019, Jagan, certain offices of Andhra Pradesh were operating from Hyderabad and there were three blocks in the Hyderabad secretariat were allotted to Andhra government with some of the offices functioning there.
But after Jagan came to power, he virtually surrendered Hyderabad to Telangana.
He vacated the Secretariat buildings and handed them over to the Telangana government, which demolished the same along with others to build a new Secretariat complex.
Some other offices of AP government, including those of the police department, which were operating from Hyderabad also moved to Vijayawada and Guntur.
Now, except the Lake View Guest House and a small office pertaing to law department, nothing is left for AP in Hyderabad.
Yet, Botsa sought to claim that Hyderabad will be the capital of Andhra Pradesh till 2024.
If what he said is correct, Jagan and his government should have continued to operate from Hyderabad. So, the question naturally comes as to why he is functioning from Tadepalli and Amaravati.
Already, there is a lot of confusion over the three capitals proposal.
Till the other day, there was a talk that Jagan would be moving to Visakhapatnam soon and that other offices would gradually shift there. Now, with the high court judgement, the government is not a position to take any decision.
There is no clarity as to whether Jagan would approach Supreme Court and even if he does, how much time it would take to resolve the issue. So, the confusion would prevail for a long time.
Under these circumstances, Botsa comment that Hyderabad would be the capital of AP till 2024 makes one wonder whether Jagan would shift the administration back to Hyderabad.
Unless there is clarity from the chief minister or his government, this confusion will continue!
