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Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, for which the foundation stone was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today on auspicious occasion of Dussehra is futiristic, but more than that it could well be the test bed for urbanisation in modern India. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu wants to move the entire AP govt machinery to the new capital within the next 10 years – AP secretariat needs to move out of Hyderabad in a decade and Hyderabad will then be capital of Telangana alone.</br> Here are the top 10 facts to know about the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh – Amaravati:
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1. Amaravati is being built on the banks of the Krishna River and is India’s first greenfield smart city. Amaravati could become the model/template for PM Narendra Modi's mega infrastructure push in the form of 100 Smart Cities project.
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2. The acquisition of 32,000 acres of land from farmers by the N Chandrababu Naidu government to build Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh has gone more-or-less smoothly. Besides the 32,000 acres land acquired from farmers, the state itself has 22,000 acres.
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3. Amaravati seed capital area (SCA) — as designed by Singapore’s Surbana Jurong — is spread over 16.9 sq km with an 8-kilometre frontage on the Krishna. This will be the core of the city, housing government offices, business districts and a population of about 3 lakh people.
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4. Amaravati city is spread over 217 sq km area — the capital region itself is planned at 7,420 sq km — and the AP government has pooled 33,000 acres of land so far.
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5. Andhra Pradesh state had acquired 31,000 acres from about 18,000 farmers by committing an annuity of Rs 50,000 per acre for 10 years and simultaneously giving back 1,250 sq yards of residential plot and 200 sq yard of commercial plot in the new city for every acre.
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6. While giving up land for the Amaravati city, the owners sign over ownership rights to a single government body, which develops the land. Once done, it returns a smaller portion back to the original owner along with a fixed annual payment for 10 years. As the land gets developed, the value of the smaller portion could exceed the original value of the landholding. By doing that, Naidu has circumvented the problems arising over forcible acquisition of land.
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7. The land holdings of farmers vary from 40-50 acres to less than an acre. While 50 per cent of the entire land acquired will be utilised for development of trunk infrastructure and social infrastructure, 25 per cent will be given back to original land owners and the balance 25 per cent will remain with the government for other uses.
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8. Amaravati incorporates many new ideas that are critical for a large city, including transit-oriented development, modern waste collection and disposal mechanisms and maintaining the ecological balance with green spaces.
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9. By getting the Singaporeans to help design and build Amaravati city, Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu has given Amaravati a veneer of class. PM Narendra Modi has laid the foundation stone of the city today and the real work on it begins now, and that includes financing the city over the next 10-15 years – till now all the work on Amaravati city has been about conceptualising the city, building it will start after today.
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10. While the Centre will contribute to funding Amaravati city — Naidu has repeatedly reminded the Centre of its duties to the bifurcated state — a very large part of the funding has to come through the PPP route. While getting PPP is a challenge in even cities that are already developed, getting them for a new city is going to be even more difficult, especially since land values in the area have already shot up dramatically. How Naidu manages to structure these PPPs and attract private investment — and gets people to pay for the services so as to make the PPPs viable, after a certain government subsidy perhaps — will be the template for several other cities in the future. Land pooling has been tried before in India, but not on the scale that Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu has done so far.
