Vijayawada sitting on a 'Land Mine' - TeluguPeople.com News

VIJAYAWADA: Vijayawada, the city around which the new capital for the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh will come up, has turned into a goldmine for big time investors in real estate.

In a State where business and politics are intertwined, a lot of hype was being built since a few months over better prospects for the coastal corridor between Vijayawada and Prakasam district -- the stretch where the capital was expected to come up.

With each passing day, land rates were going up, only to reach the peak once Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced in the Assembly that the AP's capital will come up around Vijayawada.

Apart from farmers and others holding small chunks, politicos of all hues as well as big industrialists, who have been sitting on huge land banks, have literally hit the jackpot.

Among those who acquired lands over a period of time are MLAs, Ministers and MPs and the bigwigs of film industry, though they are represented by their nominees in official documents.

According to information gathered from various sources, hundreds of acres have been acquired by prominent/monied people in the mandals of Kanchikacherla, Veerulapadu, Chendarlapadu, Mylavaram, Nuzvid, Agirilpalli, Musunuru, Bapulapadu and A Konduru -- all of them in Krishna district for which Vijayawada had been the commercial hub since decades.

There are also some who were said to have purchased lands in Nandigama, Mylavaram and Nuzvid Assembly constituencies, all of them contiguous to Vijayawada.

Once work on building the capital begins, almost every town abutting Vijayawada is expected to benefit from the spin-off effect, thereby resulting in a sharp rise in land prices.

Interestingly, it is not only leaders of the ruling TDP who were said to have bet big time on real estate. Even those representing the Opposition YSRC and some big educational institutes have reportedly invested in land, some of them having done so close to the newly proposed 184-km outer ring road (ORR).

Amaravati, a historic town close to Vijayawada, the stretch leading up to Nagarjuna University near Guntur and Gannavaram where the airport is currently located are the other areas where huge chunks of land was said to have changed hands ever since the Centre speeded up the process of bifurcation of AP last year. Interestingly, the Chennai-Kolkata national highway also passes through the same stretch.