With less than 48 hours to go, the preparations for the foundation stone laying ceremony of new Andhra Pradesh Capital Amaravati has reached a frenzied pace.
Uddandarayunipalem village on the banks of river Krishna, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be laying the foundation on Thursday afternoon has become a major tourist attraction with the people from all over the State making a beeline to see the area before it starts to metamorphoses into a bustling mega polis of concrete and glass towers.
To make the event a representative for all the sections of Andhra Pradesh people, religious leaders of all the major religions participated in a prayer meeting on Tuesday at the Acharya Nagarjuna University in Guntur. Soil and water brought from all over the State as well as important religious places all across the country were kept there as Hindu priests, Buddhist and Jain Monks, Muslim clerics and Christian priests among others took turn to read out the Holy Scriptures and prayed for the success of the efforts to create a new capital city.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Speaker of Andhra Pradesh Assembly Kodela Sivaprasad Rao, many State and Union Ministers participated in the prayers around the piles of bags and pots containing the water and soil from 17 sacred places including the Tirumala and Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh, Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan, Vaishno Devi in north to Sabarimalai in south. One litre of water and one kg of soil has also been brought from each of the 16,000 villages across the State.
“We want Amaravati to be among the greatest and iconic cities of the world,” said Chandrababu Naidu after flagging off the trucks to take the soil and water to Amaravati.
A wizard of marketing ideas and dreams he is, Chandrababu Naidu has been successful in giving an emotional touch to the historic event through his slogan of “Mana Matti, Mana Neeru Mana Amaravathi” (Our soil, our water our Amaravati). The choice of the name is also a throwback to what is called glorious past of Andhra as Amaravati was the capital of Satavahana dynasty almost 1,800 years ago.
A new capital for Andhra Pradesh became necessary following the bifurcation of the State in June 2014 which gave four centuries old Hyderabad city to Telangana.
A massive public meeting will follow the laying of the foundation stone to be watched by several Chief Ministers and Ministers from different States and representatives from 19 different countries including Singapore which has prepared the master plan for the city.
Union Minister Sujana Chowdhary, who hails from AP said that the participation of Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, Tamil Nadu Governor K Roshaiah and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was confirmed.
The State Government has also organised a massive feast on the occasion where 16,000 farmers who surrendered their lands for the new capital will be treated as special guests. However the Prime Minister was unlikely to attend the lunch as he is reportedly observing the Navratri fast.
While the seed capital area with the buildings of State secretariat, Assembly, High Court and other offices will come up on an area of 16.9 square kms, over all capital city will be built on an area of 217 sq kms and entire capital region will cover massive 7420 sq kms.
Building the seed capital area alone will cost Rs20000 crore but the Union government has so far sanctioned only Rs1500 crore for the project. Under the AP State Reorganization Act, the Union Government will bear the entire cost of the building the new Capital.