YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s ambitious plan of creating three capitals for the state will continue to remain a distant dream, at least in his present tenure.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed the hearing to April on the special leave petition filed by the Jagan Mohan Reddy government challenging the verdict of the state high court declaring Amaravati as the only capital of AP.
A division bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Deepankar Datta refused to entertain the plea of the state government to grant stay on the high court verdict.
The bench said it would take a decision only after hearing the arguments of both the sides comprehensively during the miscellaneous days in April. It rejected the argument of the Jagan government’s counsel Mukul Rohatgi that the high court verdict had no validity after the government withdrew the previous bill on formation of three capitals.
Rohatgi tried to argue that the state had every right to decide the location of the capital and there was nothing in the AP Reorganisation Act that said the state should have only one capital.
But the Supreme Court bench said there was no scope for granting the stay on the high court judgement without hearing the arguments of the respondents – farmers of Amaravati. The bench gave four weeks’ time to the respondents to present their counter.
Now that the case has been deferred to April, there is no way the Jagan government form the three capitals for the state – administrative capital at Visakhapatnam, judicial capital at Kurnool and legislative capital at Amaravati, in his present tenure.
Since the elections to the state assembly are due in March, the Jagan government cannot do anything in this regard. If he comes back to power for a second term by winning the assembly elections, he might pursue his dream by fighting the case in Supreme Court.
But if the YSRCP loses the elections and the TDP led by N Chandrababu Naidu comes back to power, he will certainly withdraw the SLP in the Supreme Court and go ahead with the development of Amaravati as the capital city!