The land value in villages falling under Amaravathi capital region was in the range of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 30 lakh per acre, before then AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu initiated land pooling for construction of Amaravathi capital city.
After Naidu completed land pooling and launched Amaravathi construction works, the land value has shot up to Rs 3 crore per acre.
If Naidu became CM for second term in May 2019, the land value would have increased to Rs 5 crore by now.
But, the land prices crashed due to uncertainty created by CM Jagan on the future of Amaravathi, after YSRCP came to power three months ago.
Going by the price at Rs 5 crore per acre, the AP government could have easily earn Rs 2 lakh crore by selling off 15,000 acres of government land in Amaravathi, had Naidu elected as CM for second term.
This is the opinion expressed by ABN-Andhra Jyothy owner Vemuri Radhakrishna in his weekly column 'Kotha Paluku" published in ABN- Andhra Jyothy today.
Radhakrishna concluded that AP lost Rs 2 lakh crore due to Jagan becoming CM.
Radhakrishna said that Naidu had mobilised 50,000 acres for Amaravathi, of which 33,000 acres were mobilised from farmers through land pooling without spending government money.
After allotting lands to various organisations, companies, industries, government buildings and create other infrastructure facilities, the AP government would have been left with nearly 15,000 acres out of 50,000 acres and if these land parcels are auctioned, the AP government could have earned Rs 2 lakh crore now.
With this huge amount, the government could have easily built a world-class capital city without any need to borrow money from banks, financial institutions and others.
But with Jagan becoming CM in place of Naidu, the entire capital city plans went haywire.
Radhakrishna also lashed out at Jagan's plans of developing Amaravathi only as an 'administrative capital' instead of a metropolitan city.
He said that world over any nation or state having metropolitan cities as capitals only have progressed as investors come forward to make investments only in such cities due to which the incomes of government and people increase.
He cited example of Hyderabad, which remains the only major revenue-earning source for entire Telangana.
Radhakrishna took exception to Jagan's plans of having only government administrative buildings in Amaravathi like Assembly, Secretariat, High Court etc. He questioned who will invest looking at government offices or buildings.