New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has responded to critics on the controversy surrounding his government employing Bahubali director SS Rajamouli in the ambitious Amaravati Project.
“Rajamouli is an excellent director. We have all seen Bahubali. He must have some talent to have created something so magical. We have only employed him as a consultant. He will give ideas, brainstorm with architects. Ultimately it is the architects who will build. This is being needlessly played up by the opposition because they don’t have any issue to raise,” the CM told CNN-News18.
Amaravati, the proposed new capital city of Andhra Pradesh is a greenfield project that is being built on acquired farmland. The opposition had recently flayed the Naidu government for bringing in a ‘film director’ instead of professional urban town planners for this project.
The ambitious Amaravati project has already procured more than 33,000 acres of land from farmers. The total investment that has been committed tops Rs 50,000 crores.
Naidu has introduced a unique concept of ‘land pooling’ where farmers will lease out the land to the government in return for which they will get a fixed income every year. Naidu claims this model offers an alternative in a country where land acquisition has been a contentious issue.
Amaravati has run into controversy from the time it was conceived. The opposition has accused Naidu of promoting vaastu and superstition in the building plan and layout of the new capital.
Earlier the lead Japanese consultant Fumihiko Maki had protested his firm’s ‘unfair removal’ and cited the lack of transparency in the project.
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