Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly passes bill to establish three capitals

The Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly late on Monday night passed the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bill, 2020 that intended to give shape to state government’s plan of having three capitals, executive capital in Visakhapatnam, legislative in Amaravati and judicial in Kurnool.

The amendments to the Bill proposed by the Opposition Telugu Desam Party were rejected by the House.

The Bill will be moved in the Legislative Council on Tuesday but the government may face an rsising task to see it through as the ruling YSR Congress has just nine members in the 58-member Upper House.

Towards the fag end of the day’s proceedings, 17 MLAs of the TDP were suspended from the House for a day as they disrupted the chief minister’s address. Winding up a nearly 12-hour debate on the Bill, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy said by distributing the capital functions and focusing on decentralisation, his government was “undoing the wrongs and historic blunders” committed by the previous regimes since the formation of erstwhile Andhra state in 1953.