When Naidu took over as the first chief minister of the state after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, he focused mainly on the construction of the new capital city of Amaravati and neglected the construction of an official residence for the chief minister.
Published Dec 05, 2024 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Dec 05, 2024 | 9:40 AM
Chandrababu Naidu in the AP Assembly. (Screengrab)
To silence critics, mainly from the YSRCP, that he visits Hyderabad frequently, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, will soon have a home of his own in Velagapudi, the village where the state secretariat is located.
The chief minister is learnt to have purchased five acres of land in the village for the construction of his house.
The land belongs to three brothers and is in the form of plots (returnable plots—this might need some explanation?) allotted to them for donating their agricultural land for the construction of the state capital Amravati under the Land Pooling Scheme.
Sources said the plan is to have the main residential structure set on three acres, alongside a building for security staff and a space for parking vehicles. The remaining two acres would remain a space for greenery.
The chief minister wants to complete the construction of the house in the next year, so he can move in by March 2026.
The value of the land that Chandrababu Naidu has purchased is about ₹30 crore – that is the registrar’s value, meaning that the market value would be several folds higher. The chief minister hopes to register the land by the end of this month, sources said.
There is no official residence for the chief minister in Amravati.
When Naidu took over as the first chief minister of the state after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, he focused mainly on the construction of the new capital city of Amaravati and neglected the construction of an official residence for the chief minister.
As chief minister, he lived in a private guest house known as Lingamaneni Guest House on the bank of River Krishna.
Living in a building constructed on the river bank is in violation of the Andhra Pradesh River Conservancy Act.
Naidu faced criticism after he lost the elections to YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in 2019 over his choice of guest house.
Soon after it assumed power, the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government demolished the Praja Vedika, the building adjoining Lingamaneni Guest House. The reason proffered at the time was that it was constructed in violation of River Conservancy Act.
Jagan Mohan Reddy also did not construct any official residence for the chief minister in Amaravati as he intended to move the capital city to Visakhapatnam, where he had built palatial buildings at Rishi Konda, facing the Bay of Bengal.
That construction became a matter of controversy after he lost the elections in 2024.
However, Jagan Mohan Reddy built a private house for himself in Tadepalli, close to Amaravati, even before the 2019 elections.
Now that Chandrababu Naidu is back in the saddle, he wishes to construct a house in Amaravati. He is no longer keen on continuing at the Lingamaneni Guest House, his current residence.
He keeps returning to Hyderabad, where he has his own house. With Hyderabad now squarely in Telangana, there is criticism that the chief minister has no sense of belonging to Amaravti in Andhra Pradesh.
That is the notion Naidu hopes to quickly dispel with the construction of his own house in Amaravati.
(Edited by Rosamma Thomas)
