After keeping silent for over a year, the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh has intensified its campaign for three capitals for the state.
Apart from filing a special leave petition in the Supreme Court after a gap of more than six months, the Jagan government has been aggressively going about propagating the three capitals proposal.
The conduct of workshops, meetings and round-table conferences in different parts of the state, besides large scale social media campaign for decentralised administration appears to be part of a broader strategy of the chief minister.
Though the Amaravati to Arasavilli padayatra by the farmers of the capital region is being viewed as the immediate reason for intensifying the propaganda for the three capitals, there seems to be more to it than what meets the eye.
According to former chief secretary of the state and Bharatiya Janata Party leader I Y R Krishna Rao, the sudden aggression from the Jagan government for three capitals is a possible indication to early elections in the state.
“The Jagan government is facing severe financial crisis and the chief minister might find it difficult to implement his freebies to the people in the next few months. It appears Jagan is planning to go for early elections to overcome this crisis,” he said.
The former chief secretary said the Jagan government had brought to the fore the three-capitals agenda as part of its plan to conduct early elections in the state so that the real issues concerning the people would take the back seat.
The opposition parties, particularly the Telugu Desam Party headed by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, too, have been guessing that Jagan might go for early elections in the state, though they are not able to guess when he does that.
However, they are suspecting that Jagan might be looking for an emotive issue to exploit in favour of the YSRC and that is why, he has brought to the fore the three capitals issue.