Eight years after the bifurcation, the Andhra Pradesh state has new districts coming into operation finally. Sister state, Telangana had done it in the first two years after bifurcation. It had increased its districts from 10 to 21 in 2016 and added two more in 2019.
Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu who came to power after bifurcation could not take up the herculean task of districts reorganisation. He focused on building a new city for the capital and spent all his five years in planning for the city, keeping the districts reorganisation aside.
Chandrababu Naidu’s successor, Jagan Mohan Reddy too kept the issue aside for his first two years. He was focusing on his Navarathnalu and shifting of the capital from Amaravati in his first two years in office. He took up the districts reorganisation only in the third year and completed the exercise in one year.
There is a lot more for people to celebrate for the new districts as some names of the new districts are interesting to the people. Creation of new districts like Konaseema (Amalapuram), Palnadu (Narsaraopet), Bhavapuri (Bapatla) and Nandyal and Tirupati are long pending demands and fulfilled by the Jagan Mohan Reddy government.
However, the government had blatantly ignored the demand of creation of a new district with Markapur as headquarters in Prakasam. Though the government had made some corrections at the last minute depending on the representations from the people, it could not satisfy a large number of people.
He broke the attachment of the people to their lands in some districts and completely ignored the distance and proximity of the people to the areas. Vijayawada airport located at Gannavaram is now part of Machilipatnam district and Vijayawada has nothing to its credit after this reorganisation.
Though the government claimed to have taken Parliamentary constituencies as base for creation of new districts, Narsapuram, Hindupur and Rajampet have missed the chance to be the district headquarters. Contrary, while the Parvathipuram Lok Sabha constituency ceased to exist in 2009 delimitation exercise.
