Seemandhra: Committee to Submit Suggestions on New Capital by 31 August

The Sivaramakrishnan Committee, appointed to suggest an existing city or a region as the capital city of Seemandhra - the residual Andhra Pradesh after Telangana has been carved out - will submit its suggestions to the Centre by 31 August. The committee members - Rathin Roy, Armar Revi, Jagan Shah and KT Ravindran - revealed this development in Visakhapatnam on 10 May.

The committee stressed that the capital of Seemandhra need not be located in the centre of the 13 districts of the Seemandhra region. This opinion of the committee gives fillip to Visakhapatnam's demand to make it the new capital of the residual AP. The committee also made it clear that an existing city or a green city could be made the new capital and both options are possible.

The committee visited Visakhapatnam's key places to study the possibility of making the port city the capital of Seemandhra. The committee visited Anandapuram, Madhurawada, Steel Plant, Atchutapuram, Parawada, IT Park at Rushikinda and a few other places in Visakhapatnam, aka Vizag. The committee chairman and retired IAS officer Sivaramakrishnan was absent in this visit, due to ill health.

When the committee was asked about Vizag's possibility of being the capital of Seemandhra, it merely said: "Visakhapatnam is a beautiful city". However, the members of the committee pointed out that they can only make suggestions with regard to the new capital of the residual AP, and a decision will be taken by the Centre. The defence establishment, including the Eastern Naval Command in Vizag, did not object the committee for a possible suggestion to make Vizag the new capital of Seemandhra, the members said.

Meanwhile, Telugu Desam Party leader and former minister TG Venkatesh has favoured Kurnool as the capital of Seemandhra, and vowed to fight for the same. He insisted Kurnool should be made capital, as the area was the capital of Andhra State, before November 1956 without the Telangana region.

'Andhra' state was created on 1 October 1953 from the then-Madras state, by combining 11 districts of Telugu-speaking people. And on 1 November 1956, the Hyderabad state or Telangana was merged with it Andhra to make it a united Telugu-speaking 'Andhra Pradesh'.