The Andhra Pradesh Government has announced its intention to develop several non-major ports along the coast and one of them is Machilipatnam in Krishna district, which is the nearest port to the State capital. Machilipatnam is, in fact, the district headquarters of Krishna district.

The work on the port has been hanging fire for several years. The foundation stone was laid by late YS Rajasekhara Reddy during the Congress rule in 2008 and since then, there has been no progress.

Maytas, Navayuga Initially, the project was awarded by the Rajasekhara Reddy government to Maytas (of the Satyam group), and after the Satyam scandal broke out, the contract was scrapped and the project was given to Navayuga Engineering Company Limited. Even after that, not much progress could be made and there were doubts about the project taking off.

The port and port-based industries, it is estimated, would require 30,000 acres near Machilipatnam and Bantumilli of which 10,000 acres are government land. The government would have to acquire roughly 20,000 acres of private land.

The government issued a notification a few days ago for acquisition of 14,500 acres of private land for the deep water port.

There is resistance from farmers and fishermen in many villages but the State government wants to win them over by resorting to land pooling system as it did in the case of acquisition of land for the capital at Amaravati.

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