APCRDA Clears Land Acquisition for Inner Ring Road, New Railway Line and Endorses Mothadaka Village Land Pooling

What was decided

The Capital Region Development Authority's 64th Authority meeting, held on Tuesday, 4 August 2026 in Amaravati and chaired by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, cleared a package of land-related decisions for the capital city. The minister said the authority also approved land acquisition for the Inner Ring Road and a new railway line to improve connectivity to the capital. It also endorsed the unanimous resolution passed by residents of Mothadaka village in Guntur district to contribute 2,344 acres under the Land Pooling Scheme.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister P. Narayana said the authority had cleared several proposals aimed at accelerating the development of the Greenfield capital city of Amaravati, including works to strengthen connectivity.

Mothadaka village land pooling resolution

Mothadaka, a village in Guntur district within the Amaravati capital region, passed a resolution — described as unanimous — to offer land under the state's Land Pooling Scheme (LPS), and the Authority formally endorsed it at this meeting. Reporting on the same decision, one account puts the land allotment tied to this endorsement at a closely related figure: the authority approved the allotment of 2,340 acres at Mothadaka village for the proposed Inner Ring Road and railway line. The 2,344-acre and 2,340-acre figures appearing across coverage refer to the same Mothadaka land-pooling action; the minor variance is likely a rounding or reporting difference rather than two separate parcels, and no single authoritative acreage has been separately confirmed beyond these press figures as of August 2026.

Under the LPS model used across Amaravati's 29 core villages, landowners hand over land in exchange for developed residential and commercial plots plus cash benefits rather than a one-time cash payment. Farmers were promised smaller but fully developed plots, typically 800 to 1,200 square yards of residential land and up to 450 square yards of commercial land per acre surrendered, along with annual annuities, pensions, skill training and village-level infrastructure.

Land acquisition for the Inner Ring Road and new rail line

The land cleared at this meeting is meant to advance two connectivity projects central to Amaravati's master plan: the Inner Ring Road (IRR) and a new railway line serving the capital. Per earlier legislative disclosures on the IRR project, the Amaravati IRR will be of total 96.2 km in length and 75 metres wide in a configuration of 8+4 lanes, and the project will be implemented in two phases. In the first phase, a 67.6-km stretch will be constructed from Kethanakonda to Nunna. The government has targeted completion of the trunk-road network, including the IRR, by April 2027. The IRR is being taken up through land pooling and acquisition and will be executed under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.

This Mothadaka clearance follows a broader second phase of land acquisition the state ordered for capital-region infrastructure. In an earlier government order, the state government issued an order to acquire a total of 20,494 acres of land, including 16,562.56 acres of patta land, 104.01 acres of assigned land and 3,828.30 acres of government land within the Capital Region under sub-section (2) of Section 55 of the APCRDA Act across seven villages, earmarked for an International Sports City, a greenfield international airport, a new railway station and the Inner Ring Road. The Mothadaka pooling endorsed on 4 August 2026 sits within this wider second-phase land programme.

Annuity borrowings ratified for existing land-pooling farmers

Separately from the new Mothadaka pooling, the Authority also took up the financial obligations owed to farmers who pooled land in the original capital-city scheme. The authority also ratified borrowings to pay nearly Rs 300 crore in annuity to farmers who pooled their lands for the capital city project.

This continues the annuity structure set out under the original 2015 Land Pooling Scheme rules, later reaffirmed with enhancements. Landowners and eligible families receive benefits including an annual annuity of Rs 30,000 for dry land and Rs 50,000 for jareebu (wet) land, with annual increments of Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000 respectively. Annuity payments to the original ~29-village cohort had been disrupted in the intervening years; infrastructure works slowed to a crawl, plot development remained incomplete, annuity payments were disrupted and pensions were stopped for thousands after the project lost momentum post-2019. The borrowings ratified on 4 August 2026 are intended to fund the annuity backlog for these farmers.

Related land item at the same meeting: Palnadu endowment lands

The same 64th meeting also brought endowments department land in Palnadu district into the pooling scheme. The authority sanctioned Rs 122 crore for bringing 244.39 acres of the endowments department inam lands in Palnadu under the land pooling scheme. This is a separate parcel from the Mothadaka village resolution but was cleared in the same sitting as part of the Authority's broader land-assembly push for the capital region.

Other decisions cleared at the 64th APCRDA meeting

The land and connectivity items were part of a larger set of approvals at the same meeting. Larsen & Toubro had secured the tender for the Rs 1,280-crore Quantum Facility Project, which has been approved by the authority as part of the government's efforts to develop Amaravati into a global technology hub. The authority also approved awarding the contract to L&T for construction of the two 18-storey Quantum Valley towers, at a cost separately put at Rs 1,205 crore for the towers. The authority approved an iconic ropeway project under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model linking Vijayawada landmarks to Amaravati, and decided to appoint a consultant to assess future bridge requirements across the Krishna River to support the proposed Amaravati-Vijayawada-Guntur mega city, projected to have a population of one crore. The meeting also approved tenders for establishing a 20-MW data centre and installation of 5G towers at 20 locations across Amaravati, and Narayana said the government had revived the HappyNest housing project and that AP RERA had agreed to waive the renewal fee payable for the project.

Practical effect and what happens next

The endorsement of Mothadaka's resolution moves that village's 2,344 acres from a village-level pooling offer to an Authority-sanctioned land-pooling action, clearing the way for APCRDA to proceed with formal reconstitution and allotment of developed plots once survey and layout work is completed. The parallel land acquisition clearance for the IRR and the new railway line gives APCRDA the mandate to begin the statutory acquisition process for the alignments needed, feeding into the wider 96.2-km IRR project already targeted for completion by April 2027. The ratified annuity borrowings are intended to clear pending payments owed to the original cohort of land-pooling farmers, addressing one of the longest-running grievances from the 2015-19 pooling exercise. As of August 2026, these are Authority-level approvals; formal notifications, survey numbers, and individual farmer allotments for Mothadaka were not detailed in the available reporting and should be confirmed against subsequent APCRDA notifications (GOs) as they are issued.