Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government headed by Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress issued a gazette notification on the auspicious Telugu New Year Day, Ugadi, April 2, effecting the reorganisation of the state by carving out 13 new districts. The state now has 26 districts, up from 13 in the past.
With a population of over five crore, AP has the second highest average district population in the country, at 41 lakh. Geographically too, it is the eighth largest state in the country, and several districts in the past were vast in size. This, the government says, forms the rationale behind carving out new districts for ease of administration and public convenience.
Also read: Explained: Why Jagan Has Created 13 New Districts in Andhra Pradesh
By greenlighting a long-pending issue, Reddy is understood to have aimed at achieving twin objectives: boosting his image as a ‘reformer’ on the administrative front, and putting his rival N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party into a tight spot, who had served as chief minister for long, but could not effect such change.
Naidu on a sticky wicket
The need for the creation of smaller districts has cropped up in the two truncated Telugu states in the backdrop of the division of the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh in 2014.
Soon after the formation of Telangana, chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao reorganised the state by forming 23 new districts, taking the tally to 33 from the earlier 10 districts. However, Naidu, who served as chief minister of the truncated AP in the aftermath of the division until 2019, dragged his feet over the issue. In a way, Reddy stole the thunder from Naidu by pushing ahead with the administrative reform.
Most importantly, Reddy named the new Vijayawada district, carved out of Krishna district, after the matinee idol and former chief minister N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), who was also Naidu’s mentor. Though Naidu had been chief minister for 14 years, he had not been able to accord such honour to NTR. With this move, Reddy has, in some way, won the hearts of NTR admirers across the state, cutting across party lines, especially from the TDP.
File photo of former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh N. Chandrababu Naidu. Photo: Reuters
In a similar move, the Jagan Reddy government ‘graciously’ conceded the request of Naidu to create a revenue division with Kuppam, represented by the latter in the state assembly, as the headquarters. Naidu had written to the government on February 22 urging it to consider the same.
Launching the new districts virtually, the chief minister took a dig at Naidu for having failed to make his own Kuppam a revenue division during his long stint as CM.
Naidu has been representing Kuppam, a backward area tucked away in the tri-junction of Tamil Naidu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh from 1989 onwards. The people of the Kuppam Assembly segment, comprising three mandals, had been forced to travel 180 kms one way to get to the revenue divisional headquarters located in Madanapalli.
The districts have been created in line with the jurisdictions of parliamentary constituencies. As the state has 25 Lok Sabha segments, it is expected to have 25 districts in total as per this criterion. But the number has gone up to 26 as the Araku Lok Sabha constituency, reserved for Scheduled Tribes, was carved out of two districts: Manyam district and Alluri Seetharama Raju district.
Jagan’s development model flayed
While inaugurating the new districts, Reddy tried to drive home the point that it was “decentralisation of governance” that necessitated the formation of new districts. However, it also brought back the memories of his botched-up endeavour to establish three capitals for the state, instead of one in Amaravati which his predecessor Naidu had laid the foundation for.
Also read: AP High Court Orders Implementation of Amaravati Masterplan
“Decentralisation of administration will lead to decentralisation of development,” Reddy declared.
However, his views and statements haven’t struck a chord with activists and opposition leaders.
Speaking to The Wire, E.A.S. Sharma, a former bureaucrat and civil society activist from Visakhapatnam, has hit out at the government’s grand pronouncement of “decentralisation of administration”.
He says that the government did not bother to secure a nod from the gram sabhas in the Agency (tribal) areas before pushing ahead with its decision to create smaller districts.
Drawing attention to the direction of the Supreme Court to the Vedanta Group’s bauxite mining project in the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha, he notes that gram sabhas in the Scheduled Areas should be consulted for any such changes as mandated by the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas Act), known as Pesa Act, 1996.
The decentralisation of administration and public convenience, as claimed by the chief minister, may not hold true in some cases.
Take the case of the Manyam tribal district, carved out of Araku Parliamentary segment with Paderu as the headquarters. Rampachodavaram and Yatapaka, both Agency areas of the district, are located 200 kms and 278 kms respectively from the district headquarters.
A spokesperson of the National Alliance for People’s Movement (NAPM), J.Babji, has countered the government’s view that decentralisation would automatically lead to the development of all regions.
“There are no motorable roads in many Agency areas. Patients have to be physically carried from the hilltop habitations to the nearest primary health centres. Development of Agency areas is not possible through smaller units of administration alone without addressing the need for basic amenities,” adds Babji.
Continuing further, he recalls that the Union government had promised to establish a tribal university in the Agency areas of the state when Telangana was separated, but there has been no progress yet on this front.
“Upgradation of vocational skills is need of the hour for Adivasis, which the government hasn’t realised yet. Also, the government has announced new districts without factoring in the aspirations and requests of the Adivasis,” he alleges.
The tribals spread over five districts in the north coastal Andhra, East Godavari and West Godavari districts have pitched for the creation of three tribal districts instead of two as done by the government. The Adivasis have already launched an agitation for the formation of a new district with Rampachodavaram as the headquarters in addition to the Manyam and Alluri Seetharama Raju districts.
Andhra Pradesh map after the reorganisation of districts. Photo: Twitter/ @APWeatherman96.
There are also allegations against the state government from several quarters that geographical considerations have taken precedence over demographic realities, and that people’s aspirations have been ignored.
In Rajampet, the local municipal vice-chairman of the ruling YSR Congress led the protests opposing the government’s move to deny it the status of district headquarters and bring it under the purview of the newly created Annamayya district with Rayachoti as headquarters.
Rajampet, which has well-connectivity in terms of road and rail transport, is currently a revenue divisional headquarters. It also has the headquarters of the sub-divisional forest office.
Caste considerations at play?
There has been a long-pending demand from the locals to carve Markapauram out of the Prakasam district and create a new district with Markapuram and Giddalur. Ignoring such pleas, the government retained Markapuram with the Ongole district. These two areas with a track record of perennial droughts and backwardness resonate with issues and views of the people from the contiguous Rayalaseema region. Rayalaseema has now got eight districts in total after the reorganisation.
Speaking to The Wire, Kalkura, a Kurnool-based writer, says one more district with Markapuram and Giddalur could have been created and taken back into the fold of the Rayalaseema region. In 1971, then Congress chief minister Bramhananda Reddy pulled Markapuram and Giddalur out of the Kurnool district while adding parts of Guntur and Nellore districts to create the Prakasam district, named after the first chief minister of Andhra state Prakasam Panthulu, explains Kalkura.
There are also allegations that the caste considerations have worked in the case of Markapuram and Rajampet to contain the dominance of Kammas, to which Naidu belongs and call shots in the state politics.
Political analyst T. Lakshminarayana is of the view that Assembly constituencies should have been taken as the criterion for creating new districts, instead of parliamentary segments.
“As a result of the flawed process parts of at least 12 Assembly constituencies have been spread over to more than one district. The boundaries of these segments may have to be revisited after the population census due in 2026, rendering the latest process futile,” notes Lakshminarayana.
On the other hand, N. Tulasi Reddy, the state working president of the Congress party, does not find “decentralisation of administration”, as is being claimed by the state government, to usher in development in the regions thus far neglected.
Instead, he says the development would be only possible by achieving whatever the Union government had promised at the time of the formation of Telangana to the truncated state, including Special Category Status, a railway zone for Visakhapatnam, a financial package to the backward regions of the state modelled on the Bundelkhand package.
He also says that the completion of pending irrigation projects such as the Handri Neeva Sujala Sravanthi, Galeru Nagari Sujala Srvanthi and Veligonda projects are important for the development of various regions in the state.
“The move of new districts is only to gloss over Jagan Reddy’s pusillanimity which is evident from his compromising postures towards the NDA government,” he alleges.
