Phase-wise plan for building capital

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh and Singapore governments have decided to have phase wise planning of the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region with timelines.

This was disclosed at a joint press conference of Singapore Minister for Trade and Commerce S Iswaran and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu here late on Monday evening. Iswaran said that the Singapore government was not only interested in bilateral relations between the two countries, but also people to people contact. Singapore has come forward to extend its international standards of expertise following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposal of Smart Cities. The Singapore government has now come forward to give shape to the vision of Andhra Pradesh chief minister, in the development of the new State capital. As part of this, master plan would be prepared separately to the capital city area, capital region area and “sea development”. For this, the International Enterprise Singapore would be handling the preparation of the Master Plan, though two of the internationally reputed agencies SURBANA and JURONG’, he added.

Claiming that the efforts in building the new State capital have crossed a milestone, by reaching in principle to complete the master plan for the capital city, capital region and sea development in a phase-wise and time bound manner. He said that the first stage of preparation of master plan would be completed by mid February, and the second phase by April and the detailed action plan for eight square kms by June this year. Once this phase would be over, and then construction work would be pursued, Chandrababu Naidu said.

Terming the initiative as building a ‘Peoples Capital”’ the chief minister said that so far 17,079 farmers have come forward voluntarily surrendering about 3,900 acres of land under the Land Pooling Scheme (LPS). He said that representatives from Japan have also come forward to help the state in building the State capital. However, at present it was the Singapore which would provide the master plan for the eight square kilometres capital city area. The most fruitful part of today’s discussions was how to develop economic activity in the city with the existing resources, as well as taking into consideration the role of the towns in the vicinity, as well as where to locate industries and the like.