Jagan's 3-capital plan hits SC hurdle

The plan to build three capitals for Andhra Pradesh will remain unrealised in the current tenure of chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy because the Supreme Court has declined to entertain his government's plea to settle the legal dispute over the issue till April, people familiar with the matter said.

Last week, there were two key developments in the top court in regard to the state's plan to build three capitals - administrative capital at Visakhapatnam, legislative capital at Amaravati and judicial capital at Kurnool instead of a single capital city at Amaravati, as was proposed by the previous Telugu Desam Party government headed by N Chandrababu Naidu.

In the first development, a division bench of justices Sanjeev Khanna and Deepankar Dutta on January 3 refused to take up an urgent hearing on a special leave petition filed by the state government on September 17, 2022, that challenged the March 3, 2022 verdict of the state high court, declaring Amaravati as the only capital.