The city of Tirupati is not just another municipal jurisdiction in Andhra Pradesh. It is the beating spiritual heart of millions of Hindus across the world, home to the shrine of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala and the temple of Goddess Padmavathi at Tiruchanur. Every year, crores of devotees make the pilgrimage here not for commerce or entertainment, but for peace, devotion, and the divine.
Now, right in the shadow of this sacred geography, 22 acres of prime land situated near the Tirupati Collectorate land estimated to be worth over ₹500 crore at prevailing market rates of nearly ₹20 crore per acre has been quietly handed over to two private companies: M/s DivyaSree Holdings Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Cybercity Builders & Developers Pvt. Ltd., for the grand sum of ₹90 lakhs per acre.
Let that sink in. Land worth ₹20 crore an acre, sold for ₹90 lakhs. A discount of over 95 per cent. Not a lease, Not a public-private partnership with safeguards and revenue sharing. No public tender was issued. The Government Order (GO) issued as an amendment to G.O.Ms.No.18, under the AP Tourism Policy 2024-2029 reportedly lacks stringent safeguards to protect public interest. The freehold basis of allotment, departing from the standard lease or PPP model, ensures that once this land changes hands, the people of Andhra Pradesh have no claim to it ever.
The project has been grandly named “Tirupati One”, an Integrated Cultural & MICE Destination. The MICE acronym stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions. In plain language: star hotels, spas, multiplexes, wellness centres, and a large convention hall in Tirupati next to one of the most revered pilgrimage sites on earth.
Devotees who travel for hours, sometimes days, to seek the blessings of Lord Venkateswara now find that what awaits their sacred city is not a cultural institution in the true sense, but a five-star hospitality and entertainment district built on land that belonged to the people, transferred to corporations at a fraction of its worth, without so much as a public tender or a notification to the citizens of Tirupati.
A Pattern That Must Be Named
What the Lulu deal in Vizag and the Tirupati One deal share is not merely a similar structure. They share something deeper: the assumption that public land is a resource to be deployed for corporate gain, that transparency is optional, that citizens can be ignored, and that the language of “investment” and “tourism” can launder any giveaway into acceptability.
Andhra Pradesh is a state that still owes its private hospitals nearly ₹2,000 crore for treating the poor under Arogyasri. It is a state whose government is raising loans and asking those very hospitals to bear the interest burden because the treasury is stretched. And yet, somehow, hundreds of crores worth of prime land can be transferred to private developers at 95% below market value, with GST holidays and tax exemptions piled on top.
If the government cannot find money to pay doctors who treated the sick, how can it justify gifting land worth ₹500 crore to luxury hotel developers? This is not development. This is not investor-friendly governance. This is the oldest transaction in the politics of patronage: power, in exchange for land.
