New districts come into force, dists in AP double to 26
This has been done as part of our promise to take governance closer to the people so as to ensure decentralisation and an efficient delivery mechanism -- CM
image for illustrative purpose
Vijayawada/Visakhapatnam: Fulfilling yet another election promise, the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy Government in Andhra Pradesh on Monday restructured the districts, creating 13 more, taking the number of districts to 26.
With the completion of the process for reorganisation of districts, Andhra Pradesh will now have a new map. The Chief Minister declared the formation of new districts from Monday as a 'red letter day' in the history of the State.
"This has been done as part of our promise to take governance closer to the people so as to ensure decentralisation and an efficient delivery mechanism," the Chief Minister said, while virtually launching the new districts from his camp office at Tadepalli near Vijayawada.
Reddy said they had taken such care that all the administrative offices of the Collectorates will house the offices of all the Collectors, SPs and departments to prevent people from going from one place to another to get things done.
Drawing a comparison with the other States, he stated that even smaller States like Arunachal Pradesh have 25 districts for better administration and of all the 727 districts in the country, Andhra Pradesh is the only State with a high average of 38.15 lakh people in each district. With the creation of 13 more districts, the average population density has come down to 19.07 lakh, he stated.
Recalling the 2019 elections, he stated that YSRCP had promised to create each Parliament constituency into a district and going by the population density the tribal area had to be split into two districts.
The new districts were created consequent upon gazette notification issued on Saturday. The Chief Minister also interacted briefly with the Collectors and SPs of some of the districts. There were protests in some parts over the demand to rename some districts and in some parts demanding formation of new districts. 'Black Day' was observed by some parties at Hindupur for rejection of the demand to make it district headquarters. The demand for renaming Sri Balaji district as Tirupati district has been conceded to respect local sentiments.
The government, which received 16,600 suggestions and objections in response to the draft notification on formation of new districts, created an additional district in erstwhile Visakhapatnam with tribal areas by including some scheduled areas of East Godavari for administrative convenience. Each district has a population of 9.25 to 24.59 lakh.
Prakasam will be the largest district in terms of geographical area with an area of 14,322 sq km while Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore district will have the largest population of 24.69 lakh. Both the districts incidentally have 38 mandals and eight Assembly constituencies each.
Manyam district with headquarters at Parvathipuram will be the smallest district with a population of 9.25 lakh. The Alluri Sitarama Raju district with headquarters at Paderu will have three segments. The districts have been created in such a way that each one will have three to eight segments.
Visakhapatnam will have the distinction of being a totally urbanised district with density of population. It will have 11 mandals with a population of 19.59 lakh.
