A big article published by Eenadu Telugu daily on Tuesday explaining how Visakhapatnam cannot become a capital city due to its distance from several parts of the state, particularly Rayalaseema and south coastal Andhra has kicked up a big debate in the media.
The article has sought to create an impression that Rayalaseema could be completely alienated from rest of Andhra because of long distance from Visakhapatnam, if the latter was made the administrative capital. Even the opposition parties have been raising this issue for the last few days.
However, former chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh I Y R Krishna Rao, who has taken a different stand from other Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, says the distance to Visakhapatnam is not a big issue at all.
According to him, when people of Nellore and Chittoor could travel up to Hyderabad, they might not face much difficulty to travel to Visakhapatnam.
“During the combined Andhra Pradesh regime, people used to come to Hyderabad from corners of Rayalaseema. They did not face any difficulty. When Hyderabad could be the capital city, why can’t be Visakhapatnam?” he argued.
He, however, said people had not faced problems coming to Hyderabad because of the connectivity.
“If the state government takes measures to improve the transport facility to Visakhapatnam easy, the people of Rayalaseema also would not face any problems,” Krishna Rao pointed out.
"If we can reach the destination by overnight travel, the distance between Rayalaseema and Visakhapatnam is not very long. This was why Hyderabad was not considered as a distant city during the combined AP,” he said.
Krishna Rao suggested that the government should focus on two projects to reduce the distance from Rayalaseema to Visakhapatnam by completing Guntur-Nandyal double line railroad and Anantapur-Vijayawada Expressway.
He, however, differed with the three capitals plan. He said the legislative and executive should be one place and high court could be in another city.
“But compared to Amaravati, Vizag has the potential to develop on par with Hyderabad,” he said.
Krishna Rao said the infrastructure needed for the capital could be built at a cost of less than a thousand crores of rupees instead of spending over a lakh crore on Amaravati.
“It is a waste of money as it would take a hundred years to develop Amaravati,” he said.