Amaravati debts to be repaid via land sales: Minister Narayana

Andhra Pradesh Municipal Minister P Narayana announced that debts linked to Amaravati’s greenfield capital project will be repaid by selling 5,000 acres of land rather than using taxpayers’ money. He highlighted that farmers have pooled nearly 35,000 acres for the project, with most returnable plots already distributed.

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh Municipal Minister P Narayana on Saturday said the debts associated with the greenfield capital city of Amaravati will not be cleared utilising the taxes paid by people, but by selling 5,000 acres of land.

Noting that the southern state has set aside 5,000 acres of land in Amaravati, the minister said one acre is expected to command Rs 20 crore by the time the greenfield capital city’s construction is completed.

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“We will not pay Amaravati capital debts using the income generated through people’s taxes. We will repay them by selling 5,000 acres of Amaravati land,” said Narayana in an official press release, adding that a visionary leader will think on these lines, alluding to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

According to Narayana, the TDP-led government has spent Rs 10,000 crore on Amaravati until now and invited tenders for projects worth Rs 51,000 crore.

On April 10, he said farmers from Pedaparimi village handed over 1,000 acres under the land pooling scheme for the greenfield capital, adding that 31,150 farmers in total gave nearly 34,983 acres of land until today.

Highlighting that 98.6 percent of the returnable plots have been have been delivered to farmers, the Minister said 62,942 plots have been registered.

He said 30,074 farmers received the plots while the allocation of another 450 acres of land to 651 farmers is pending due to some court cases.

Further, Narayana alleged that former CM Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has unleashed a “venomous propaganda” against the greenfield capital city and accused YSRCP leaders of “targeting” Amaravati with one story a day.

He claimed that YSRCP leaders are in anguish as they did not expect Amaravati construction works to resume at such a “high speed”.

Narayana referred to Jagan Mohan Reddy’s proposal for MAVIGUN, which the former CM pitched as more practical.

The minister rejected the proposal, defending the current scale of Amaravati as an “international standard” project designed to be a modern , sustainable and even a “mosquito-less” city.

On April 1, Jagan had asked Naidu to designate the MAVIGUN region – Machilipatnam, Vijayawada and Guntur – as the capital area or corridor of Andhra Pradesh, calling the “Rs 2 lakh crore Amaravati project impractical.”

He contended that MAVIGUN already has existing national highways (NHs).

Narayana expressed regret over the delay caused by the previous government, saying the construction costs have spiked significantly since 2019.