New innings of AP Assembly

A saga of hardship from Kurnool to Velagapudi

Velagapudi: Haunted by bitter memories and nostalgia, the Andhra Pradesh Assembly restarted its innings on AP soils in a newly-constructed building in the riverfront transit capital on Thursday. This landmark event took place after a gap of six decades since Hyderabad became the capital with Telangana as its integral part of the combined state on November 1, 1956.

The inaugural ceremony, ahead of the budget session scheduled from March 6 presented a picture of identical features involving the predicament of the temporary capital surrounded by farm fields at Velagapudi and the makeshift capital provided in army tents in Kurnool after the unbundling of Andhra from the Madras Composite State on October 1, 1953.

From the makeshift capital in the army tents in Kurnool to the temporary capital in the farm fields in Amaravati region, it is of course a saga of trials and tribulations. The 74-year-old, Dr A. Chakrapani, Speaker of the AP Legislative Council, incidentally hailing from Kurnool district, turned nostalgic at the inaugural function while recollecting the hard struggles the state has experience in its quest for rebuilding on the two historical occasions.

“As a boy of 11, I was a direct witness to how the Andhra state rose from scratches with its capital in a temporary army tent at B-Camp, residence of first Chief Minister and Andhra Kesari Tanguturi Prakasam Panthulu in a college building (STBC College) and Raj Bhavan in another college building (KBR College) and Assembly on the premises of a district court,” the septuagenarian Chakrapani recounted.

He finds no difference with the latest journey the truncated state has begun after bifurcation in 2014. “The only silver lining is our leader (AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu). He has got unique traits to let the people move on during the crisis. Flashing a smile in hardship is his unique trademark which never lets his people lose their heart,” Chakrapani observed.

Assembly Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao sought to trace a common threat that connects his hometown of Narsaraopet in Guntur district to the makeshift capital in Kurnool and the temporary capital at Velagapudi. Nelapati Venkataramaiah Chowdary, who presided over the maiden Andhra Assembly session in Kurnool, was the son of the soil of Narsaraopet. “I take pride to be the presiding officer of the Assembly of the successor state at Velagapudi as a native of the same area,” Rao said.

Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu too turned emotional while addressing a function soon after inaugurating the Assembly building. “It is a mixed bag of hope and despair when the state capital moved here.

Velagapudi as a place of new capital offers hope to rebuild the state with an envious glory. Still despair haunts the state as it inherited debts in huge amounts with wounds inflicted by the division,” Naidu said. Leaving the Assembly buildings in Hyderabad with which Chandrababu had an emotional attachment for nearly four decades in his political career is quite painful, he said.

“My journey as a student from SV University, Tirupati, began when I stepped into the portals of the Old Assembly building in 1978 in Hyderabad. My further inning as a minister too began on the same premises,” Naidu said.

Later, new Assembly building adjacent to the old one was built during NTR regime where I served as a two-time CM,” he recollected. “The Assembly buildings in Hyderabad as a whole helped me serve as a long-standing CM for nine years and also an opposition leader with similar length of period,” he observed.

“The feeling that I am no longer part of such Assembly buildings which gave me a major break in politics is something which I still cannot digest,” he added. However, the capital in Amaravati reinforces positive vibes to move ahead, he said.