Andhra Pradesh 'three capitals' case posted to November 15

The Andhra Pradesh high court has adjourned the hearings in the case challenging the three capitals plan of Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy to November 15.

The decision by a three judge bench on Monday was following requests from some of the advocates and also the petitioners' plea to postpone the hearings citing the threat posed by the Covid-19 third wave.

The Amaravati farmers, who parted with about 33,000 acres of land in 2015 for the grand, greenfield capital planned by the then Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, are on a continuous agitation since December 2019, when Reddy had announced his plans to strip the region in Guntur district of its sole, mega capital status.

Some of the farmers and public representatives had challenged the capital decentralisation and abrogation of the AP Capital Region Development Authority legislation brought in by the Reddy government in January 2020. The acts were notified in July last year.

However, hearing dozens of the petitions, the AP high court had in August 2020 barred the YSRCP government from making any move shifting the executive capital to Visakhapatnam.

In January, Justice JK Maheshwari was replaced b Justice Arup Kumar Goswami as the AP high court chief justice.

The Justice Goswami headed bench convened in virtual mode on 26 March to consider the opinions of the government and farmers to decide on the course to be adopted for the case amid the pandemic and had posted the matter to May 3. The case was later posted to August 23.