Rushikonda is the rare beach whose two most important facts contradict each other. It is Andhra Pradesh's only Blue Flag beach, and it sits directly beneath a hill the state government half-cut for a ₹450-crore complex that petitioners argued violated the coastal rules the Blue Flag is supposed to certify. To stand on the sand is to look up at both stories at once.

What the Blue Flag actually means. The Blue Flag is an eco-label run by the Foundation for Environmental Education, awarded to beaches that meet a set of criteria for bathing-water quality, safety and services, environmental education, and coastal-zone management. In October 2020 Rushikonda was named one of the first eight Blue Flag beaches in India, and it is still the only one in Andhra Pradesh. That is a genuine distinction: it means the shoreline is monitored, guarded, kept clean, and managed to an international standard. It is also a maintenance obligation, not a trophy, which is why the certification was withdrawn in February 2025 over lapses in upkeep and hygiene, and restored only weeks later once the authorities fixed them.

What was built on the hill. In 2021, after the state announced plans to move Andhra Pradesh's executive seat to Visakhapatnam, the APTDC demolished its old Haritha resort at Rushikonda and began a ₹450-crore complex on the hill: seven blocks with a built-up area near 20,000 square metres, named after regional dynasties including Vijayanagara, Vengi, Kalinga, and Gajapathi. It was marketed throughout as a tourism resort. In November 2023 a government panel identified it instead as a camp office and residence for the chief minister. It was inaugurated in February 2024, still called a resort, and after the change of government in June 2024 it was closed to the public pending an inquiry and the courts.

Where the rules come in. Building on a coastal hill in India means working inside the Coastal Regulation Zone framework, which grades the shore into zones and forbids most development in the most sensitive of them. Petitioners, including sitting politicians, took the project to the National Green Tribunal and the High Court, alleging breaches of the CRZ notification, the Visakhapatnam master plan, and prior court orders. The NGT issued an interim order in 2022 barring further construction, and the Supreme Court subsequently allowed work only on the footprint of the demolished resort and on flat land. A March 2023 survey by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change found roughly 18 acres of the hill affected by cutting, slope disturbance, and soil dumping, against about 9.88 acres permitted, and reported that APTDC had altered the number and location of blocks without prior approval.

The cost to the ground itself. The environmental case is not only about acreage. Petitioners reported that APTDC dumped building waste and gravel over naturally formed sea-sand dunes between the low and high tide lines, a band classified as CRZ-I, the no-development zone. Those dunes are a nesting environment, and burying them in construction spoil is precisely the kind of harm the CRZ-I designation exists to prevent. So the hill above a Blue Flag beach, the award that certifies coastal-zone management, became a case study in coastal-zone rules being tested and, by the petitioners' account, exceeded.

The case for the project, stated fairly. The state framed the complex as legitimate tourism infrastructure with CRZ clearance obtained in May 2021 and municipal approvals behind it, an upgrade of a decades-old government resort on land the APTDC already held. Supporters argued the hill had long carried a resort and that the new build sat largely on the old footprint. Whether that defence survives the ministry's excavation findings and the resort-versus-residence dispute is exactly what the courts were left to decide.

What Rushikonda actually is. It is a real, popular, genuinely golden beach that, when maintained, earns its Blue Flag, and it is the clearest place in India to see how differently coastal rules can be applied to a shoreline and to the hill immediately above it. Visitors come for the sunrise, the jet skis, and the water-sports scene; the cut terraces and pale blocks on the slope behind them are visible the whole time, closed and waiting on a court verdict. The flag flies over the sand; the slope behind it was cut for a palace sold as a resort. Both are true, and they are the same beach.