It appears the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh is not a hurry to form the three capitals formation but it wants to go in a systematic manner so that it would not face any further legal hurdles.
Though the chief minister is committed to decentralisation of administration through formation of three capitals – executive capital at Visakhapatnam, judicial capital at Kurnool and legislative capital at Amaravati, he doesn’t want to make the same mistake of hurrying through things and face a setback in the judiciary.
Jagan first wants to exhaust all the options in the state high court before going to the Supreme Court, which is the final authority. If he directly goes to the Supreme Court and gets rejection, then he cannot implement his three capitals plan but continue Amaravati as the only capital.
It was evident from the appeal made by state advocate general Subrahmanyam Sriram in the state high court which is hearing a contempt petition filed by the Amaravati farmers on the development of the infrastructure as per the high court judgement of March 3.
Sriram told the high court bench comprising chief justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and justices D V S S Somayajulu and Cheekati Manavendranath Roy that the state government was actively considering either filing a review application in the high court or a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court.
He also brought to the notice of the high court that some of the farmers had already filed an SLP in the Supreme Court, which is expected to come up for hearing very soon.
However, senior counsel for the farmers Unnam Muralidhar said the SLP was not against the high court judgement but on some other issues which are not part of the judgement.
The high court said it would be proper for us to wait for some time before proceeding further and posted the case to October 17 for further hearing.
It is learnt the AG had suggested to the Jagan government to first file a review petition in the high court itself, challenging the March 3 verdict. It will definitely take a few months to conclude the hearings and give a fresh judgement.
Based on that, the state government could move the Supreme Court and it would take another six or seven months. In the meantime, it will be the election year and the Jagan government can conveniently put on hold his three capitals’ plan!