Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy will start functioning from the Visakhapatnam camp office which is under construction from October 24.
CM Jagan will reach the port city on October 23 and will inaugurate the first block of the new camp office the next day and will start working from there.
The Chief Minister set it, as it is a auspicious date coinciding with the Dasara (or Dussehra) festival.A decision to this effect was taken during a previous cabinet meeting.
It is learnt that officials of concerned departments will have to go from Amravati to Visakhapatnam for review meetings on day to day basis.While other administrative offices will be moved to the port city in a phased manner
Though officials felt that this could put additional financial burden on the government, the Chief Minister is said to have decided to start functioning from Visakhapatnam.
It may be mentioned here that he had announced in the Assembly itself that the executive capital would be shifted to Visakhapatnam but it got delayed as there was no camp office and also because the issue got into legal tangle, The case is still pending in a court of law.
Soon after forming government in May 2019, chief minister Reddy in December that year announced that the state would have three capitals — executive (administrative) capital at Visakhapatnam, while legislative and judicial capitals at Amaravati and Kurnool, respectively — in a move he said was for the decentralisation of state administration.
In June 2020, the state legislature passed a bill in this regard, but it was challenged in the high court by Amaravati farmers, who had parted from their land for the development of the city as the state capital.
After prolonged hearings, the Andhra Pradesh high court on March 3, 2022, upheld Amaravati as the only capital of the state and questioned the legislative competence of the assembly to pass the three-capitals bill.
In September last year, the state government challenged the high court verdict in the Supreme Court, which will hear the matter next in November.
