The land acquisition notification, which was issued in August 2015, has been renewed for one more year to acquire the proposed 33,177 acres of land for the Machilipatnam port and industrial corridor.
In August 2015, then Krishna District Collector (Babu A.) had issued the land acquisition notification which was renewed in August 2016. By now, the notifications for both land acquisition and pooling are in force, enabling the district authorities to choose any of the methods to gather the targeted land.
“The District Magistrate & Collector and Chairman of Machilipatnam Area Development Authority (MADA) B. Lakshmikantam renewed the land acquisition notification on Saturday for the period of one year to gather 33,000 acres of land,” MADA Vice-Chairman M. Venugopal Reddy told The Hindu . The one-year renewal period of the land acquisition notification will expire on August 31.“We are yet to convince the farmers and other private land owners to part with their land. Presently, some individual land owners are preferring land pooling scheme while the rest are demanding land acquisition,” Mr. Reddy said.
Compensation row
On the other hand, the State government is reportedly not willing to pay the compensation under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. Of 33,177 acres of land proposed to be acquired in Machilipatnam and Pedana rural mandals, 14,620 acres is patta land and the government owns 9,440 acres. Assigned land is above 9,000 acres. The 2014 report by then Krishna Collector (M. Raghunandan Rao) estimated that ₹495 crore package was required to acquire 5,277 acres of land for the port alone.
Minister K. Ravindra and MP K. Narayana tried in vain to convince the private land owners and farmers to part with their land for the port.
