NTR Beach at Vakalapudi gets facelift.

The NTR Beach at Vakalapudi has turned into one of the major tourist destinations with the Tourism Department giving a complete facelift to the seashore by spending ₹46 crore.

Beachfront resorts with high-end facilities are surrounded by musical fountains, glass bridge across the salt creek, food courts and the conventional hall have now made the beach a destination for corporate conferences and private functions. For the visiting public, laser shows and musical fountains remained the crowd pullers.

Under the ‘Swadeshi Darshan’ programme, the Union government has allocated ₹69 crore to the Tourism Department in East Godavari district, in which a major chunk has been allocated on developing the beach. With the beach festival remaining an annual calendar event, the NTR Beach has started gaining recognition from people residing outside the district and the State.

Since a couple of film promotion programmes and musical concerts by A.R. Rahman and S.P. Balasubrahmanyam featured in the recent edition of the festival, the potential of the beach such as serene environment coupled with huge seating capacity and access to the public transport has come to the fore. Though the plan to develop the beach had been announced about five years ago, it got materialised only after release of funds and the works got completed in a phased manner.

“The beach project comes under the Kakinada-Hope Island-Corangi-Konaseema tourism circuit, which is a part of the first phase of Bharat Darshan project. Works are in progress to develop Maredumilli and Rampachodavaram to attract tourists to the Agency area,” says District Collector Kartikeya Misra. As of now, the general public is being allowed into the beachfront resorts without any entry fee. However, it is not the permanent plan as the idea is to generate money in the form of entry tickets to take care of the maintenance part.

“The beach will join the list of major tourist attractions in the State now. We are also giving complete facelift to the Vivekananda Park and the Gandhi Park in the city under the Smart City initiative and the renovated premises will be opened for the public very soon,” Mr. Misra adds.

THE HINDU