AP to relocate 15 key departments to hired buildings: Minister Narayana

It appears that the union budget has poured cold water on the Andhra Pradesh government's plans to set up temporary Secretariat in the AP region ahead of building a brand new world class capital in Guntur district. Instead it will hire buildings for locating only 15 key departments in AP and keep remaining non -fiscal Departments in Hyderabad secretariat till a new capital is ready.

The Andhra Pradesh government is having second thoughts about constructing a temporary capital for shifting some of the offices of head of departments (HoDs) by June or July. Because of the chaos over land pooling and also lack of adequate finances, the proposal to locate the temporary capital at Amaravathi, Mangalagiri or even Thullur has been abandoned. At a high level review meeting on the proposal on Tuesday, it was decided to drop the idea of temporary capital and shifting of key departments to the next academic year. Otherwise the exercise would have commenced from June this year.

With the land pooling for the first phase almost through, the government has to launch annuity payments to farmers of about Rs.150- 160 crore who parted with their lands. Given the financial crunch and the gaping revenue deficit, the government has now put off the massive temporary office shifting exercise and will make do with Hyderabad in spite of all pinpricks.

Municipal Minister P. Narayana, Chief Secretary I. Y. R. Krishna Rao and other senior officials plan to review the issue once again with employee associations around March 10 to elicit their opinion for a final go on the proposal. Sources said though some ground work had been done for erecting fabricated structures, they were now veering to drop the proposal and instead identify and hire available buildings, including Nagarjuna University campus, private engineering college buildings for locating the offices of HoDs.