The Certified Shore and the Cut Hill: Rushikonda's Coastal-Rule Paradox
Rushikonda is Andhra Pradesh's only Blue Flag beach and the site of one of India's most-litigated recent disputes over coastal development. Both facts attach to the same shoreline. The Blue Flag certifies the sand; the hill directly behind it was half-excavated for a ₹450-crore government complex that petitioners argued, before the National Green Tribunal and the High Court, violated the coastal rules the Blue Flag is meant to reward.
What the Blue Flag Actually Certifies
The Blue Flag is an eco-label administered by the Denmark-based Foundation for Environmental Education. To fly it, a beach has to meet criteria across four areas: bathing-water quality, environmental education and information, safety and services, and environmental management of the site and its surroundings. In October 2020 Rushikonda was named one of the first eight Blue Flag beaches in India, and it remains the only one in Andhra Pradesh.
The certification is a recurring obligation rather than a one-time honour. In February 2025 Rushikonda lost the flag over lapses in maintenance and hygiene, and regained it only after the authorities carried out corrective work. That the label can be pulled and restored within a season is the clearest evidence it means something specific and measurable, not a permanent brand.
The Hill and the ₹450-Crore Complex
The beach takes its name from the hill behind it: rushi konda, "hill of the sages." In 2021, after the state announced plans to move Andhra Pradesh's executive seat to Visakhapatnam, the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC) demolished its old Haritha resort on the hill and began building a new complex of seven blocks, named after regional dynasties including Vijayanagara, Vengi, Kalinga, and Gajapathi, with a built-up area close to 20,000 square metres.
The project 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 officially called a resort, and after the June 2024 change of government it was closed to the public pending an inquiry and the courts.
Where the Coastal Rules Come In
Building on an Indian coast means working inside the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) framework, which grades the shore by sensitivity and forbids most development in the strictest zones. Petitioners, including sitting politicians, took the Rushikonda 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 restraining further construction. 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 changed 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.
That is the paradox in its sharpest form: on the shore, a beach certified for coastal-zone management; on the dune line and the slope above it, an allegation that coastal-zone rules were exceeded to build on the hill.
The Case for the Project, Stated Fairly
The state framed the complex as legitimate tourism infrastructure. It obtained CRZ clearance in May 2021 and municipal approvals afterward, and it argued the hill had long carried a government resort, so the new build largely replaced an existing footprint on land the APTDC already held. Whether that defence survives the ministry's excavation findings, the gap between roughly 18 acres affected and about 9.88 permitted, and the resort-versus-residence dispute is exactly what the courts were left to weigh.
What It Adds Up To
Rushikonda is a genuinely golden, genuinely popular beach that, when maintained, earns its Blue Flag. It is also the clearest place in India to watch how coastal rules can be applied to a shoreline and contested on the hill immediately above it. The two facts are not a coincidence of geography; they are one story about protection and development on a fast-changing coast, told on a single stretch of sand.
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