Amaravati as sole capital by law makes three-capitals petitions infructuous: Andhra Pradesh High Court

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Friday held that the batch of writ petitions challenging the erstwhile three-capitals proposal has been rendered infructuous, since Parliament has now given statutory recognition to Amaravati as the State's only capital.

A Division Bench headed by Chief Justice Lisa Gill observed that the amendment to the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, which accords legal sanctity to Amaravati as the sole capital, had taken away the basis on which the petitions had been filed. The matters came up for hearing on Friday.

The court indicated that any cases still pending would be taken up on November 20, noting that appeals filed in the Supreme Court against the High Court's Amaravati judgment of March 3, 2022, are likely to be heard on November 29, 2026.

Appearing for the State, Advocate General Dammalapati Srinivas told the Bench that the government had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in December 2024 committing itself to completing the infrastructure projects in Amaravati within three years, and that the works were progressing at a brisk pace.

Counsel for some of the petitioners submitted that the State government ought to settle the matter by withdrawing the Special Leave Petitions through which the previous YSR Congress Party government had contested the High Court's verdict on the two 2020 laws that facilitated the three-capitals plan — the AP Capital Region Development Authority Repeal Act and the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Act. A senior advocate also sought the allotment of developed plots to all beneficiaries of the Land Pooling Scheme in a time-bound manner.

Senior counsel Jandhyala Ravi Sankar said more than 120 petitions had been filed in the High Court against the proposed three capitals, and that his prayer for a continuous mandamus had already been conceded in the High Court's judgment. The matters now under review were largely procedural, he said, as the larger question of the capital had already been decided on merits.

The three-capitals proposal was put forward in December 2019 by the then Chief Minister, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who envisaged Amaravati, Visakhapatnam and Kurnool as the legislative, executive and judicial capitals respectively. The plan triggered widespread protests, chiefly by farmers who had parted with their land under the Land Pooling Scheme for the construction of Amaravati.

In March 2022, a three-judge Bench of the High Court ruled that the capital could not be shifted out of Amaravati, holding that the State lacked the legislative competence to reverse the decision taken in 2014-15. The YSRCP government challenged that judgment through a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court.

Against this backdrop, Parliament passed the AP Reorganisation (Amendment) Act on April 2, 2026, giving statutory recognition to Amaravati as the only capital of the State with effect from June 2, 2024 — the day Hyderabad ceased to be the joint capital.