The leaders of the YSR Congress party are jubilant after the successful conduct of the Global Investors Summit in Visakhapatnam on March 3 and 4, which is believed to have given a lot of mileage to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.
What made them even more jubilant was the announcement made by the chief minister during the summit in the presence of global industrial giants that Visakhapatnam will soon become the executive capital city of the state and that he would be moving there soon.
Now, the YSRC leaders are talking more confidently about Visakhapatnam as the administrative capital.
On Monday, State Industries Minister Gudivada Amarnath declared that the shifting of the administration to Visakhapatnam is only a matter of days.
“In a few days from now, our chief minister will be shifting his base to Visakhapatnam and begin his administration from there. Until the other day, we were talking about the shifting of the chief minister’s office soon. Now, it has come down to days,” he said.
The minister also indicated the shifting of the entire administration to Visakhapatnam before the commencement of the next academic year, which begins in June.
“The exercise in this direction has already begun,” he announced.
The Supreme Court has already announced that it will hear the Amaravati vs three capitals issue on March 28. Given the complexity of the issue, as admitted by the Supreme Court judges, it is not clear how long the hearing will take.
However, even before the delivery of the judgement, the Jagan government is making preparations for the shifting of the capital.
“If the hearing prolongs for a few more months and the judgement is delivered by the year-end, the state will already be in election mode, and Jagan will not be in a position to take any steps to move to the capital then, in the event of a positive judgement in his favour,” sources added.