'Capital in Vijayawada will be a Disaster'
HYDERABAD: Former judge of the AP High Court and Rayalaseema Development Forum (RDF) honorary president Justice P Lakshmana Reddy said that the best option available to the AP state government was to choose a right place in the Rayalaseema region where lakhs of acres of barren land, mostly government's, was available for construction of capital city.
Talking to newsmen here, Reddy said that it would be an ecological devastation if the Eluru-Vijayawada-Guntur belt was chosen as capital. Land prices have already skyrocketed in that green region and there would be large-scale migration of people from agriculture to real estate which would hit the food production badly, he warned.
He further said that the new Land Acquisition Act had already laid down stringent norms for acquiring land and this would take away major portion of money meant for capital construction. Acquiring lands in a congested area would lead to a lot of litigation and this would prove to be a major hindrance to a quicker construction of the capital.
Asked about the connectivity problem, the former judge brushed aside the issue, saying that in this era of Internet and email, communication between people has become much easier. Equipped with state-of-art technology, employees would work for the state from a place they are asked to function and that is their duty.
'Moreover, we have ten years of time to work from Hyderabad as common capital and that is more than enough to build a more spacious capital and planned city. Can we think of alienating 5,000 acres of green lands for the sake of an international airport in Vijayawada, Gannavaram or Eluru? Whereas it is much cheaper and easier to do so in Rayalaseema region.'
Moreover, the large-scale employment opportunities that come along with capital construction would keep the people of Rayalaseema region away from factions and this was a historical opportunity to bail out the Rayalaseema region from the vicious circle it was in, he said.
News Posted: 24 June, 2014
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