For some farmers of Gudatipally village, the fight for justice has been stretching for more than a decade. But justice has been eluding them.
After a lull of few weeks, the farmers of Gudatipally were forced to stall the works of Gouravelli reservoir on Friday. With work on other reservoirs except Mallannasagar completed, the district administration has been focusing on completion of Gouravelli reservoir and several senior officials made a visit in the recent past.
Tension prevailed for several hours at Gouravelli reservoir in Akkannapet mandal on Friday when a large number of oustees stopped the ongoing works demanding that the compensation due to them by the government must be paid immediately.
According to sources, the road that was leading to Kundanavaripally and Gandepally was closed by the officials on Wednesday. This was despite repeated appeals by the villagers of Gudatipally and three tandas — Somaji tanda, Bandakai tanda and Sevya Naik tanda. The villagers claimed that closing this road will create problems for not only villagers but also for the residents of the three tandas.
Gudatipally village will get submerged under Gouravelli reservoir once it is completed. The issue of compensation not being received by some of the villagers has been continuing for the past 13 years and officials never made concrete efforts to sort out the issues being pointed out by the oustees time and again.
The reservoir was actually proposed during the tenure of former Chief Minister of united Andhra Pradesh late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy with 1.5 tmcft capacity but later it has been increased to 8.4 tmcft after Telangana Rahstra Samithi (TRS) came to power. The problem for many farmers was that they had lost land in the first land acquisition that took place around 2009 and the same farmers were losing land for the second time. For some of the farmers the compensation is yet to be received.
The same issue came up again on Friday when officials reached there with heavy police support to continue the works. Large number of oustees gathered at the spot and stalled the works with the demand to continue works only after compensation was paid to all the eligible. As the oustees did not heed, officials returned back.
“The officials have asked us to allow works stating that all the pending issues will be addressed one by one. In the last 13 years such promises were made repeatedly and never fulfilled. Hence we made it clear to the officials that the works will not be allowed till compensation is paid to all the eligible,” B. Raji Reddy, sarpanch of the village told The Hindu . Several villagers expressed similar opinion.
