CAPITAL MATTER

Farmers agitating for the retention of

Amaravati as Andhra

Pradesh’s capital city pose a fresh challenge to

CM Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s plan of three ‘decentralised’ capitals (Visakhapatnam and Kurnool being the other two). A few hundred farmers who had given land for Amaravati will set out on a 600 km march on September 12 and end it on November 17. As they would have passed through Visakhapatnam, the planned administrative capital, Jagan, wary of violence, asked the police to refuse them permission. Jagan should learn from the Centre’s bitter experience with the 2021 kisan agitation over new farm laws and handle them with kid gloves.

—Kaushik Deka with Anilesh S. Mahajan, Amarnath K. Menon, Kiran D. Tare and Rahul Noronha