Amaravati: Telugu Desham Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu said on Tuesday that Amaravati will be declared as the sole capital of Andhra Pradesh. He made the announcement a day ahead of swearing-in as chief minister of the state, PTI reported.
He was addressing a joint meeting of TDP, BJP and Janasena legislators. At the meeting, the NDA leader in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly was unanimously elected.
Naidu said, "In our government, there will be no games under the guise of three capitals. Our capital is Amaravati. Amaravati is the capital."
He became the CM of the state after it was bifurcated into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014. However, he lost the 2019 elections to YSRCP and its chief, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. Reddy and his party had made a landslide victory in those elections. Naidu had floated the idea of Amaravati as capital in 2014 itself.
However, Reddy poured cold water on the Amaravati capital city plans and propounded a new theory of three capitals, which Chandrababu Naidu has now replaced with the decision to have a single capital.
The results of assembly elections in the state this year were a stark contrast to what happened in 2019. The NDA alliance of TDP, BJP, and Janasena resulted in a landslide victory over Jagan's YSRCP. The elections were in parallel with the Lok Sabha polls, and NDA scored 164 assembly seats out of 175 and 21 of 25 Lok Sabha seats.