CM has put off his announcement of choice of Vijayawada as state capital to Thursday, September 4 on advise of astrologers that today is not a good day. However the Chief secretary has issued circulars to all govt departments on space needed for setting up their 182 departments and 140 directorates.

The AP cabinet which met for four hours decided that the Shivaramakrishnan committee recommendation for decentralization was not feasible in view of the odd shape of the  new state and location of 13 districts. ‘How can rice and groundnut farmers of Rayalaseema go all the way to Vizag if Agri commissionerate is set up there. Similarly fisheries and shrimp HoD can not be set up at Chittoor or Anantapur’  said some ministers.

In a surprise manner yesterdays cabinet meet was attended by two non officials – Abhista, OSD in CMO (a pal of Lokesh) and Parkala Prabhakar, Media adviser (BJP minister Nirmala Seetharaman’s hubby). Chief secretary IYR Krishna Rao presented the Shivaramakrishnan report and also a feasibility report on how and why  decentralization would be a tough task.

Chandrababu Naidu heard from all the ministers about why they wanted whether Visakhapatnam, vijayawada or Kurnool be made the capital. The officials were asked to explain the good and bad aspect of each of these towns in detail and also finally a financial burden was also discussed. ‘We can not spend thousands of crores in each cities for govt departments, that way we will bring more inflation and have to tax people more’ Finance minister Yaamala explained.