The Telugu Desam Party Telangana State unit has demanded that the government acquire land under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act-2013 for all the irrigation projects, including the Mallannasagar reservoir.
TDP-TS working president A. Revanth Reddy said the offer of payment of Rs. 5 lakh an acre to the affected farmers under GO 123 would not be sufficient and farmers seeking adequate compensation to forego their land was justified. Moreover, the provisions under the GO 123 would not be of any help to agriculture labour who constitute over 50 per cent of the population affected by the Mallannasagar project.
“The government is claiming that Rs. 5 lakh an acre is a handsome package. We are prepared to pay Rs. 10 lakh an acre for the land owned by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his family at Erravelli which is close by,” Mr. Revanth Reddy said. He dared the Chief Minister to respond to the gauntlet if he was committed to the cause of the affected farmers.
Mr. Revanth Reddy was arrested when he was on his way to the site of Mallannasagar project to interact with the farmers there. Mr. Reddy, who accompanied the delegation of media representatives from the party headquarters, however, boarded an RTC bus midway sensing that he would be prevented from reaching the project site. En route, he got into a four-wheeler after knowing that the police were informed about the bus in which he was travelling. He was however stopped at Gajwel where he was detained by the police even as the TDP and TRS activists entered into mild scuffles. The TTDP working president criticised the Chief Minister for suppressing the peacefully agitating farmers. The police lathi-charging the agitators and firing guns in the air exposed the dictatorial tendency of the government that was trying to quell the agitators using force.
He recalled that the government reduced the storage capacity of Pamulaparthy reservoir from 21 tmc ft to seven tmc ft to avoid submergence. The same yardstick was not being adopted in case of Mallannasagar where the storage has been increased from 1.5 tmc ft to 50 tmc ft giving scope for large scale submergence. “The government is trying to pressurise the farmers to surrender their land under the provisions of GO 123 at a time when farmers are insisting on the provisions of Land Acquisition Act of 2013,” he said. The TDP-TS was firm on standing by the farmers and the party would stage a two-day protest in Hyderabad on August 13 and 14 where the next course of action would be finalised.
