Though the commencement of Amaravati capital construction is shrouded in mystery, the expensive capital-studies abroad are going on. This week a ten-member official team, lead by Lakshmi Parthasarathi, is visiting Guizhour, China from May 5 to May 10, 2016.
Lakshmi Partha Sarathi, a retired IAS officer from Telangana, is heading the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Capital City Development and Management Corporation(CCDMC). This has been set up to mobilize funding for capital construction and other Amaravati related issues.
The is sixth official visit to China from Andhra Pradesh, including one by chief minister Chandrababu Naidu last year.
Chief Minister Naidu made a six-day trip to China and visited a couple of provinces to study the urban development and sign many MoUs. In December 2015, municipal minister P Narayana led a team of officials from Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) to Guiyang city in China to discuss the issues related to capital city and urban development.
Now, Lakshmi Parthasarathi’s team is by far the biggest team with 10 members. They are: V Rama Manohara Rao (addl. commissioner, APCRDA), Gandham Chandrudu, (joint collector, Krishna District), V Prasanna Venkatesh, (addl. Commissioner, Capital City Project, APCRDA), R Rama Krishna Rao, director (Planning), APCRDA , S.Rama Murthy, chief engineer (T&T), CCDMC, K Sudarsdhan Reddy, chief technical Officer, CCDMC, Vishjwanath Sista, chief planning officer, CCDMC, JSRK Sastry, director, strategy, APCRDA and KV Ganesh Babu, principal planner, APCRDA.
The purpose of the visit, according to Sashibhushan Kumar, political secretary of AP government is to have exposure to Urban and Architectural, Infrastructure, etc of Chinese cites. He said the team will submit a report to the government after their visit
Earlier, official teams of from Andhra Pradesh visited Austria, Kazakhstan, China, Turkmenistan, South Korea, UAE and Brazil to study the newly-built capital cities such as Suzhou, Wuxi and Hangzhou (China), Songdo (South Korea), Vienna (Austria), Astana (Kazakhstan), Ashgabat (Turkmenistan), Masdar (UAE) and Brasilia and Curitiba (Brazil) to learn the technologies employed in the construction of their capital and other cities.
Naidu has been sending the officials to four corners of the globe to bring home the best practices evolved in the construction of world-class capitals. He wants to incorporate them in the design and construction of Amaravati, so that the new capital also would become one of the top ten global cities in the world.
Apart from officials the CM himself studied many cities. He visited Singapore half a dozen times. After China he made a three-day visit to Japan where he studied the functioning of bullet trains in the country by taking a ride Kyoto to Fukuoka last year. Naidu asked China’s Railway Group to prepare a feasibility report for project meant to connec Vizag and Chennai with a bullet train that passes through Amaravati.
