Tension prevailed in Green Fields Colony at Kanajiguda on Tuesday after Revenue Department authorities demolished a few illegal structures.
Four special teams, including two demolition squads from the Revenue Department, led the demolition. Earth movers pulled down a few concrete structures, ten huts and two compound walls of a few plots in survey numbers 373, 376, 378, 380,384 and 386 at Kanajiguda.
Green Fields Colony is in the news after Secunderabad Cantonment MLA P. Shankar Rao was arrested by the police to investigate into the alleged colony land grabbing case.
Members of the Green Fields Plot Owners Association too demanded a probe by the CBI probe into the land dispute case.
Residents and hutments made a vain bid to stop officials from demolishing the structures.
“We constructed a make-shift hut and have been living since two years. We pleaded with authorities to give us some more time but they did not heed our request,” said Yadamma, a hut owner, pointing to the ramshackle furniture and asbestos sheets dumped on the roadside.
Repeated warnings
Since last one year, the department identified 22 structures that were constructed illegally on government lands.
Several notices were served and even complaints were lodged against four people at the Alwal police station for encroaching government lands.
While some constructed single-floor houses, others raised pillars and constructed compound walls in violation of norms, said a senior official from the Revenue Department.
Political pressure
“When authorities tried to demolish these structures in the past, there was huge political pressure and it could not be carried out. The matter was later taken up with the Ranga Reddy Collector, who recently issued orders and we acted accordingly,” the official said.
Special Grade Deputy Collector (Land Protection) K. Rajendra Reddy, who participated in the demolition, said the lands under the survey numbers were part of the Inam lands confiscated by the government in 2002 after cancellation of Ownership Rights Certificates.
“We have not touched the structures that came up before 2005, as most of them are under the regularisation process. We have removed only the recent ones, which included even those belonging to Green Fields residents,” Mr. Reddy informed.
