Amaravati, April 11 Andhra Pradesh Municipal Minister P Narayana said on Saturday that the debts associated with the Greenfield capital city of Amaravati will not be cleared using taxes paid by the public, but by selling 5,000 acres of land.
Noting that the southern state has set aside 5,000 acres of land in Amaravati, the minister said that one acre is expected to be worth Rs 20 crore by the time the construction of the Greenfield capital city is completed.
"We will not pay off Amaravati's debts using the income generated through taxes paid by the public. We will repay them by selling 5,000 acres of land in Amaravati," said Narayana in an official press release, adding that a visionary leader would think along these lines, alluding to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
According to Narayana, the TDP-led government has spent Rs 10,000 crore on Amaravati until now and has invited tenders for projects worth Rs 51,000 crore.
On April 10, he said that farmers from Pedaparimi village handed over 1,000 acres under the land pooling scheme for the Greenfield capital, adding that a total of 31,150 farmers have given nearly 34,983 acres of land until today.
Highlighting that 98.6 percent of the plots have been delivered to farmers, the minister said that 62,942 plots have been registered.
He said that 30,074 farmers have received the plots, while the allocation of another 450 acres of land to 651 farmers is pending due to some court cases.
Further, Narayana alleged that former CM Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has launched a "venomous propaganda" against the Greenfield capital city and accused YSRCP leaders of "targeting" Amaravati with one story a day.
He claimed that YSRCP leaders are in anguish as they did not expect the construction of Amaravati to resume at such a "high speed."
Narayana referred to Jagan Mohan Reddy's proposal for MAVIGUN, which the former CM pitched as more practical.
The minister rejected the proposal, defending the current scale of Amaravati as an "international standard" project designed to be a modern, sustainable, and even a "mosquito-free" city.
On April 1, Jagan had asked Naidu to designate the MAVIGUN region – Machilipatnam, Vijayawada and Guntur – as the capital area or corridor of Andhra Pradesh, calling the "Rs 2 lakh crore Amaravati project impractical."
He contended that MAVIGUN already has existing national highways (NHs).
Narayana expressed regret over the delay caused by the previous government, saying that the construction costs have spiked significantly since 2019.