The Maha Padayatra, a 45-day walkathon by farmers and other land owners belonging to Thullur and Tadikonda mandals of Amaravati, began on Monday at Thullur.
More than 5,000 people gathered and marched 14.5 km before ending the padayatra for the day at Tadikonda. The protestors had lunch at Pedaparimi.
On Tuesday, they would reach Lam and halt at Guntur.
The High Court permitted the event with some conditions. It said that a limited number of people would be allowed and no speeches should be made during the padayatra. The AP police also said that people should take out padayatra by following certain conditions.
Several leaders of the TDP and Congress took part in the programme on the first day.
The padayatra is being taken out as part of the agitation demanding that the capital should be located at Amaravati.
The genesis
In 2014, the then Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu announced that the Capital region would come up between Guntur and Vijayawada. Later, a master plan for developing Amaravati City (covering 217 sq.km) was prepared. The government claimed that 33,000 farmers had given their lands through an innovative Land Pooling Scheme (LPS) undertaken for the first time in India at that scale.
The land pooling was enabled through a legislation, APCRDA Act 2014, passed by the State legislature.
Construction activity began in 2017 and the trunk infrastructure was also developed.
Soon after the YSRCP stormed into power, the construction activity came to a halt. Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy announced on the floor of the Assembly in December 2019 that the State would have three capitals – Executive Capital at Visakhapatnam, Legislative Capital at Amaravati and Judicial Capital at Kurnool – to ensure equitable development of all three regions.