HYDERABAD: The new capital city, Amaravati, continues to provide an opportunity for babus to travel across the globe to undertake study tours. Foreign jaunts by senior officers to study urban infrastructure across the world to design Amaravati are continuing unabatedly.
Now, it is the turn of D Lakshmi Parthasarathy, CMD of Capital City Development and Management Committee (CCDMC) to lead a delegation of APCRDA officials to China. During the visit from May 5 to May 10, the officials will tour the Guizhou province to study urban infrastructure.
The team has been asked to submit a report of their visit to the Municipal Administration & Urban Development within one week after their return, with well defined suggestions to be adopted for Amaravati.
Likewise, another five-member team headed by B Sam Bob, Special Chief Secretary (Transport department), will visit San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Dallas in the United States from May 11 to May 23 to study expressways.
“During their visit, the team members will study road development activities for incorporating the learnings in the proposed Amaravati - Anantapur Expressway with straight alignment,” Shashibhushan Kumar, secretary to government, said.
However, the expenditure of this tour will be borne by Aarvee Associates Consultants, who were appointed for the preparation of Techno Economic Feasibility Study for the expressway project.
So far, along from Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Urban Development Minister P Narayana, several top officials have undertaken visits to various countries to study planned capital cities.
APCRDA commissioner N Srikanth has visited Guizhou Province in China. Teams comprising senior IAS and IPS officers including Principal Secretary (Energy) Ajay Jain and DGP J V Ramudu visited modern cities across the globe to fine-tune Amaravati’s design in December last year.
Before that, three teams comprising 17 junior officials of APCRDA had gone to Austria, Kazakhstan, China, Turkmenistan, South Korea, UAE and Brazil to study a few more newly-built capital cities such as Suzhou, Wuxi and Hangzhou (China), Songdo (South Korea), Vienna (Austria), Astana (Kazakhstan), Ashgabat (Turkmenistan), Masdar (UAE), Brasilia and Curitiba (Brazil).
But, nobody knows how far their foreign tours contributed to the design and planning of the new capital city.Despite the State’s precarious financial position, some more Babus have been allowed to undertake foreign jaunts. APSRTC MD N Sambasiva Rao (IPS) will visit Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand from May 16 to May 23 for participating in a study tour on ‘South East Asian Models of Infrastructure Development’.
Similarly, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of APMDC, Ch Venkaiah Chowdary (IRS), is on a three-day tour of Saudi Arabia since April 30.
Study tour?
■ Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Urban Development Minister P Narayana have visted several countries
■ Senior officials are also taking up foreign tours in the name of Amaravati