Andhra Pradesh government scouting for suitable land for proposed Lulu mall in Vijayawada

The Abu Dhabi-based Lulu Group has evinced interest in making investments in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam in the State.

The 8th State-level Investment Promotion Board (SIPB) meeting held on July 17 approved the ₹1,222 crore projects, expected to create 1,500 jobs. Officials dealing with the matter said representatives of the Lulu Shopping Malls International Ltd. were supposed to come last month to discuss the finer details of the project in Vijayawada, but the scheduled meeting got postponed. The challenge is to identify land for such projects, which is in short supply within the city limits, while the investors seldom show interest in setting up their projects outside the city purview.

The officials propose to show three places to the investing firm to set up the mall—around five acres of land belonging to the A.P. State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) at the old bus stand near the police control room, a piece of land belonging to the Endowments Department at Gollapudi, and another parcel of land at Patamata belonging to Andhra Pradesh MARKFED. “Their requirement is around five acres and all the three proposed places fulfil their need in terms of area,” said an official, adding that the project is at its preliminary level and it is yet to touch the ground.

The Lulu Group Chairman M.A. Yusuf Ali, after meeting the Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in September last year, announced on his X handle that the company will start an international-standard shopping mall with an eight-screen IMAX multiplex in Visakhapatnam and state-of-the-art hypermarkets in Vijayawada with modern food processing and logistics centres.

The news of the proposed new facility may have brought cheer to people, especially the youth, in the city, but it has evoked opposition by some quarters. Leaders of the CPI(M) have slammed the government proposal of considering construction of a mall on the lands belonging to the APSRTC, stating that the State should instead focus on strengthening the public transport infrastructure.

On Sunday, the State committee of APSRTC Staff and Workers Federation urged the government to withdraw its proposal to allocate the Governorpet depot-2 and old bus stand lands to the multinational company.

The federation’s State president Ch. Sundarayya and general secretary M. Ayyappa Reddy alleged that as part of the Central Government’s policies, the State was handing over RTC lands to private entities.

Referring to reports of relocation of the RTC depot, they said around seven years ago, the RTC Transport Academy and Zonal Training College at Gannavaram near the airport were demolished and the land was given to a company owned by Shiv Nadar. The alternative land promised by the government is yet to be allotted to the RTC. They alleged that transfer of public properties to corporate companies at cheap rates was a part of the ploy to privatise the public sector.

The federation leaders said they were also opposed to the outsourcing of RTC operations to private players under the Gross Cost Contract (GCC) model and said the government should drop the move.