Going in tune with the spirit of the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill passed by Lok Sabha on Tuesday the Andhra Pradesh government should return irrigated multi-crop land “pooled” from farmers of the Capital area, said P.V.Rajagopal, national president of the Ekta Parishad and associate of Anna Hazare.
The Act forbids acquisition of land that included multi-crop irrigated area and the State government should respect the Central Act, he said.
Mr. Rajagopal said he had come down here to make a study of the way land was being taken from farmers for constructing a new capital for Andhra Pradesh. “Economically correct is not always ethically correct, taking land by force needs to be opposed,” he said. It took nearly 120 years to amend the British Raj’s Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and it took just one year for all this effort to go waste with the new Bill, he said.
He said Anna Hazare was going to walk from Sevagram, Wardha, to New Delhi to protest against the introduction of the Land Acquisition Bill in Parliament. The 1,100-km long march would be covered partly on foot and partly by vehicle in 32 days to reach the Ramleela Maidan in New Delhi on May 1 and it would culminate in a massive public meeting against the Bill.
He said committees were being formed in all the States in support of the march against the Bill. The unacceptable pooling of irrigated, cultivable land from farmers on such a large-scale for development of infrastructure in A.P. was a big issue and would be opposed along with such attempts in other States.
Land should be mapped, that is graded into arable or otherwise, and the top grade land should not be used for development of industry or infrastructure. The land acquired by the government should be audited and if it was not being used it should be returned to farmers, he said.
