As the Supreme Court is postponing the hearing of Amaravati-related cases and the issue is to be resolved in the apex court, sources say that Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is planning to shift his base to Visakhapatnam. However, he would not name it as capital, not even the executive capital, for the time being.
Jagan Mohan Reddy had been firmly saying that Visakhapatnam would be the capital of the state, while Amaravati would host the Assembly sessions and Kurnool would house the high court. He is firm on moving the executive to Visakhapatnam from the day one he was elected as chief minister in May 2019.
However, with some cases pending in both the Andhra Pradesh high court and now in the Supreme Court, the chief minister had delayed the shifting. In fact, he also withdrew the three capitals bills due to the court cases.
Now, the battle has reached the Supreme Court and there are 8 petitions which are related to the Amaravati as capital and 28 other petitions related to the bifurcation of the state. The Supreme Court, in all likelihood, might take some time to hear and clear all these petitions.
There is no mention of capital for the states in the constitution and the chief minister is free to function from any place, say some of the constitutional experts. Accordingly, without announcing Visakhapatnam as the capital, the chief minister might move to the port city any time and start functioning from there. No court would have the right to question the chief minister for this, the experts say.
There is a clear provision and procedure in the constitution for the location of the high court, which has to be recommended by the Supreme Court and finally declared by the President of India. However, there is no such provision in the constitution or any established procedure for the chief minister to locate his seat.
It is now to be seen how fast Jagan Mohan Reddy would make his move to shift the administration to Visakhapatnam city.
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