Ministers have been insinuating to the farmers from Undavalli, Penumaka and Nidamarru that it would be in their interest to sign up for the Land Pooling Scheme – the door to which has been strategically kept open – rather than see their lands wrested from them under land acquisition laws.
The LPS gives its signatories handsome compensation rather than the LA decree.
To that proposition, the farmers of Undavalli, Penumaka and Nidamarru say the LPS would nowhere nearly match the market value of their properties, which are on the riverfront and abut the highway.
Said farmer A. Govinda Reddy, “One acre of land in my village costs anything between Rs. 2 crore and Rs. 20 crore depending upon the location. How can the LPS even match that kind of value?” he asked.
LPS beneficiaries stand to get an annuity upward of Rs 30,000 per acre per annum and 1,400 sq yards of a developed plot in Amaravati.
At present, the registration value in the capital city area ranges from Rs. 3 lakh to Rs. 18 lakh per acre whereas an acre in Nidamarru would go for anywhere between Rs. 80 lakh to Rs. 1.2 crore. “We won’t get a single-room house in the city for the kind of compensation the government is offering us,” a woman farmer said.
The reluctance of farmers in Undavalli, Penumaka and Nidamarru stems from the fact that the market value of their property is so high that even the best deal under the LPS would be a loss to them.
So why take it? The Government’s case is that the LA compensation would be infinitely worse, so why hold out.
The farmers rest their hopes on the fact that theirs is multi-crop land, the acquisition of which the LA laws does not allow.
