The Andhra Pradesh government is going to adopt a two-pronged strategy to complete land acquisition process for the construction of a green-field international airport in Bhogapuram, which is located on the national highway between Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam.
The proposed area comes under the jurisdiction of Vizianagaram district. The government planned to minimise the land acquisition and pay ‘attractive’ compensation to complete the acquisition process quickly. According to sources, the government is likely to pay between Rs. 25 lakh and Rs. 33 lakh per acre and it is considered to be the highest compensation in the history of Andhra Pradesh.
The government decided to pay the compensation as per the New Land Acquisition Act-2013 to avoid criticism from the Opposition parties and to calm down the farmers who agitated for two years to oppose acquisition as well as construction of an airport in their vicinity where the people did not have bus shelter all these decades.
The revenue officials are likely to hold meetings with farmers and others in the villages such as Gudepuvalasa, Kancheru and Kavulavada to explain the latest details of the package. The government will also pay compensation to the real estate developers who have their ventures. The persons who bought plots in various ventures will also get compensation as per the market value.
As part of the second strategy, the government will acquire only 2,000 acres although it needed 5,312 acres for establishing the airport. “It will be easy to complete acquisition in phase-1 since we needed only 2,000 acres in which 480 acres belonged to the government. We are getting positive response from farmers as they are assured to get decent package as per the new Act,” said a senior official.
Meanwhile, Air Travellers’ Association of India president D. Varada Reddy and other delegates met Vizianagaram Collector M.M. Nayak and urged him to convey to the government that there was no need to have an international airport in Bhogapuram since the existing airport in Visakhapatnam had all the facilities and was able to handle more number of flights.
“Road journey from Visakhapatnam to Bhogapuram will be a major concern since it would take more than an hour to reach the airport. Private operators will put heavy burden in the form of various taxes and user development charges which are currently not collected in the Visakhapatnam airport. The burden will be up to Rs. 2,000 for international passengers and Rs. 500 for domestic travellers,” said Mr. Varada Reddy.
