At 76, Naidu pedals 5.5 km of midday heat for a greener Visakhapatnam

Andhra University has seen many ceremonies. Chancellors, convocations, visiting dignitaries, planting saplings with the practised ease of people who know they are being photographed. Friday’s World Environment Day programme at the AU Engineering Grounds was, for the most part, that kind of occasion. Then the Chief Minister got on an e-bicycle and rode 5.5 kilometres through the city in the midday heat, and it became something else.

N. Chandrababu Naidu, 76, had arrived by helicopter at 10.20 a.m., landing at a helipad set up within the campus. The coastal heat was already considerable, the mercury above 35 degrees Celsius, and the humidity around 70%. When someone pointed out that the programme was being held in punishing summer heat, Mr. Naidu was unfazed. That, he said, was precisely the reason more trees needed to be planted. He planted a sapling. He addressed the media. And then he said, with the directness that has long marked his public manner, that only 25% of this 450-acre campus was green and that this was not good enough.

The comparison he reached for was Tirumala, where greenery now covers nearly 90% of the hills. Andhra University, he said, should aspire to the same. He directed Vice-Chancellor G. P. Raja Sekhar to work towards a net-zero campus, with solar panels on buildings generating enough power for all university needs, vacant land given over to trees and waste processed into biogas. The campus, in his telling, should become a biodiversity park and a knowledge hub, a place that teaches sustainability by embodying it.

The ambition extended beyond the campus. Mr. Naidu said the State was committed to raising Andhra Pradesh’s green cover to 50%, and that action would be taken on all fronts to protect the city’s environment, including at the port. The reference to the port was pointed: coal dust from port operations has been a persistent grievance among residents of the city’s northern neighbourhoods. Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, he added, was leading an initiative to distribute five crore seed balls across the State as part of the broader greening effort.

He added, with a grin, that party workers who grew their saplings well might find election tickets easier to come by.

Then he mounted an e-bicycle. Through the Three Town police station, past the Polamamba temple, along Waltair and down Beach Road, he covered the distance to the venue of the National Workshop on Seafood Export in 21 minutes and 18 seconds. He waved to people on the pavements as he went. He would cycle back to the helipad as well, the bicycle his chosen mode of transport throughout his time in the city.

It was a carefully staged moment, no question. But on a day when the heat index made standing in the sun an act of endurance, a 76-year-old Chief Minister choosing an e-bicycle over an air-conditioned vehicle, with elected representatives and officials riding alongside, carried its own uncomplicated force.

Among those present were Assembly Speaker Chintakayala Ayyanna Patrudu, Union Minister for Civil Aviation Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, State Social Welfare Minister and district in-charge Minister Dola Sree Bala Veeranjaneya Swamy, and Government Whip P. V. G. R. Naidu (Ganababu). MLAs Ganta Srinivasa Rao (Bheemili), Velagapudi Ramakrishna Babu (Visakhapatnam East), Ch. Vamsi Krishna Srinivas (Visakhapatnam South), Penmetsa Vishnu Kumar Raju (Visakhapatnam North) and Panchakarla Ramesh Babu (Pendurthi) were also present.

District Collector M. Abhishikth Kishore, VMRDA Chairman Pranav Gopal, VMRDA Commissioner Tej Bharat, GVMC Commissioner Ketan Garg, Andhra Pradesh Cooperative Oil Seeds Corporation Chairman Gandi Babji, and Seethamraju Sudhakar of NTR Vaidya Seva were among the officials present.