The Blueprint
- The interim government complex, with a capacity to hold 4,500 employees, is spread over 45 acres. It has six buildings, four of which are being built by L&T and two by Shapoorji Pallonji. This secretariat is being built on black soil of the fertile Krishna delta. The cost is Rs 500 crore.
- Andhra Pradesh has so far received Rs 1,050 crore from the Centre for building the Capital. It needs between Rs 45,000 crore-I00,000 crore overall. HUDCO has given Rs 7,500 crore; World Bank is to provide $1 billion spread over several years.
- McKinsey and Company has prepared a socio-economic masterplan which predicts that the capital region of Amaravati will generate $35 billion by 2050 in terms of ITeS, electronics and other industries.
- The land rates in Vijayawada are at an all-time high. One square yard of land on the Bandar Road is Rs 2 lakh, says addl commissioner, CRDA, N Srikanth.
- The capital region will have 28 towns with a projected population of 1.5 lakh each. Each will be divided into four equal parts with 50 m wide roads. Najarjuna Construction has bagged the tender for laying one major arterial road.
- Out of 55,000 acres meant for the capital, farmers in 1,600 acres are still resisting. Their land will be taken over by law.
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A balmy breeze from the nearby Krishna blows across empty fields in Venkatapalem, a village a few miles from Vijayawada. Part of the fertile Thullur mandal of Guntur district and earlier flush with fruit and vegetable crop, it’s now a village in waiting—for it falls in the area notified for Andhra Pradesh’s dream capital Amaravati. Resistance to chief minister Chandrababu Naidu’s land pooling scheme is now a mere whimper, and despite the sowing season, farmers just sit and wait for plots to be allotted to them so that they can live the urban dream.