The 16-member high-power committee formed by the government to examine the recommendations of the G.N. Rao Committee and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on the strategy for all-round development of the State, including the Capital, is scheduled to begin its exercise on Tuesday (January 7), according to official sources.
Members of the panel led by its convener and Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney will look into the two reports which advised that the Capital should be a distributed model and separate development plans be drawn up for the regions.
Both the expert panels suggested that Visakhapatnam should be made the Executive capital, Amaravati the legislative capital and Kurnool judicial capital having the principal seat of the High Court (HC) with Benches in Visakhapatnam and Amaravati.
The recommendations on the Secretariat and the HC were more or less the same but the views on the location of Assembly were slightly different.
Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy had stated in the Assembly on December 17 that A.P. could have three capital cities.
Contentious issue
The G.N Rao committee was studying the issue at that time and submitted its report on December 20.
That the government had also roped in the BCG became clear a few days later. It (the BCG) presented its findings on January 3.
Protests have been going on in Amaravati against the proposed three capitals since then (December 18) while the idea of shifting the CMO and the Secretariat to Visakhapatnam and setting up the HC in Kurnool is being hailed in the north Andhra and Rayalaseema regions.
