Amaravati, May 3 -- : "At last, Amaravati is becoming a reality. Our relentless fight for five years has paid off... Now, we are breathing easy," said 35-year-old Gadde Surendra Babu, a farmer from Rayapudi village.

Babu was one among the nearly 24,000 farmers who together gave at least 34,000 acres of fertile land a decade ago to the state government for the construction of Amaravati as the Andhra Pradesh capital under a Land Pooling scheme (LPS). He surrendered 23-acres of land, hoping he would be part of a world-class capital city visualised by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu. But then things changed. The YS Jagan Mohan Reddy swept to power in 2019 and abandoned the Amaravati project, leaving Babu and thousands of other Amaravati f...