Visakhapatnam to be Andhra Pradesh's capital, announces Jagan Mohan Reddy

The announcement indicates reddy apparently sticking to the three-capital plan — the other two being Kurnool and the existing capital Amaravati — despite the High Court ruling last year that it can't make a law for that.

The case is pending in the Supreme Court based on an appeal by Reddy's YSRCP government.

Reddy, who made the assertion about Visakhapatnam while marketing an investment summit to be held there, has consistently favoured the coastal city as the Executive Capital.

"Here I am, to invite you, to Visakhapatnam, which is going to be our capital in the days to come," he said, announcing the global summit scheduled for March 3 and 4.

Although he did not set out a timeline, Reddy said, "I myself will be shifting over to Visakhapatnam in the months to come."

When Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the new state got Hyderabad as its capital.

The Andhra government in 2015 led by TDP's N Chandrababu Naidu, operating out of Hyderabad in the interim, had then declared that Amaravati, in the Vijayawada-Guntu region on the banks of the river Krishna, would come up as the new capital.

However in 2020, the state planned to have three capital cities — Visakhapatnam for the executive, Amaravati for the legislature, and Kurnool for the judiciary.

The legislation was later withdrawn and Amaravati formally remained the capital.

Amaravati has been at the centre of an alleged land scam, for which Reddy's party YSRCP has demanded a probe against the previous chief minister Naidu.

Reddy's party alleges that some people who were told in advance about the location of the new capital had bought land there to benefit from an imminent boom.

In a representation to the Centre, the state government said over 4,000 acres were bought by such people in 2014.