Visakhapatnam will be Andhra Pradesh capital: CM Reddy’s big announcement

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Visakhapatnam will be Andhra Pradesh’s new capital, Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy announced today, thus sealing the fate of the specifically-developed capital Amaravati.  

“Here I am, to invite you, to Visakhapatnam, which is going to be our capital in the days to come,” he said, announcing an investment summit to be held there on March 3 and 4. While he did not set out a timeline, he did add, “I myself will be shifting over to Visakhapatnam in the months to come.” 

This comes in the ninth year after Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh and got Hyderabad as its capital. 

Then operating out of Hyderabad in the interim, the Andhra government in 2015 led by TDP’s N Chandrababu Naidu had declared that Amaravati, in the Vijayawada-Guntu region on the banks of the river Krishna, would come up as the new capital. 

Then in 2020, the state planned to have three capital cities — Amaravati, Visakhapatnam and Kurnool. That plan was later withdrawn and Amaravati formally remained the capital. 

The coastal city of Visakhapatnam — its name sometimes shortened to Vizag — is the largest and most populous city in Andhra Pradesh. After Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, it is the second largest city on the east coast of India.