No progress in sight, actual construction of Amaravati yet to

\ take off\ Amaravati, Oct 27 (PTI) Union Finance Minister Arun\Jaitley will lay the foundation stone tomorrow for the\construction of \\"financial and administrative cities\\" in\Andhra Pradesh\\’s new capital region, but the very construction\of Amaravati seems to have gone back to square one after\hitting roadblocks.\ The Centre has released Rs 1,500 crore in the last two\years for the construction of the Andhra Pradesh government\\’sew Secretariat, High Court and other buildings in the new\capital, but the state has not spent a single rupee so far,\though it has been seeking the release of more funds.\ Jaitley may be laying the foundation stone tomorrow, but\it will be many more months before the actual construction\activity starts as the state government has to first finalise\the designs for the buildings that are to come up in the\administrative city.\ In June 2015, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had\conducted a \\’bhoomi pujan\\’ to symbolically launch the works\and on October 22, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid\the foundation stone for the actual construction works.\ Since then, not a single brick has been laid for the\development of the capital, except the construction of the\Interim Government Complex (temporary Secretariat).\ In July last year, agencies of the Singapore government\had submitted a masterplan for the development of Amaravati\and in March this year, the state government had \\"approved\\"\the designs submitted by Maki and Associates of Japan for the\government buildings in the capital.\ In June, a Singapore consortium had proposed to build the\\\"start-up\\" area of the capital as a purely commercial venture\under the Swiss Challenge method.\ Based on that, the Capital Region Development Authority\(CRDA) had invited counter bids in August from other firms for\the development of the start-up area, but that ran into legal\trouble as the CRDA did not disclose the revenue share offered\by the Singapore consortium. (MORE) PTI DBV NSK\RC\SRE\