Cancellation of the proposed public hearing on the land scam in Visakhapatnam, which was scheduled to be held on June 15, and setting up of the SIT (special investigation team) in its place and the extent of land in question being reduced to just 277 acres pertaining to just two regions of Kommadi and Madhurawada, raise doubts about the government’s intention in getting into the depth of the land scam. It rather appears that the government intends to water down the entire issue, opines YSR Congress district president Gudivada Amarnath.
The opposition parties, including the Left parties, feel that the land scam that extends to 10 mandals in the district is relegated to just two villages in Chinagadili mandal.
Basically, the land scam area in the district can be divided into two regions -- Vizag (urban) and Vizag (Rural). The land encroached in the city (urban) is limited to just a few areas, but in the rural it extends to 10 mandals such as Chinagadili, Bheemunipatnam, Padmanabham, Anandapuram, Pendurthi and Sabbavaram, according to CPI (M) State Secretariat member Ch. Narasinga Rao.
“District Collector Pravin Kumar himself has initially said that about 5,000 acres have been encroached and later he made it to 277 acres. We cannot go by what the Collector says, as land revenue details can be gathered from a number of departments such as CCLA, Town Planning, VUDA, GVMC and Revenue,” says Mr. Amarnath.
Modus operandi
Land tampering appears to be one of the main modus operandi of the land grabbers. Unlike in other districts, Visakhapatnam district has huge amount of land under Inam and Devasthanam category. Post independence a survey of all land was made and registered under SFA (Settlement fair adangal) and later another re-survey was made and posted under 10 (1) adangal.
“The revenue officials in connivance with the land grabbers tampered with the records to benefit land sharks. There are many cases, where original owners’ names have been replaced in the web lands by fictitious names,” alleges Mr. Amarnath.
According to Mr. Pravin Kumar, 16,735 FMBs (field measurement books) out of 2,45,896; 233 out of 3022 RVMs (rough village map); and 379 out of 3022 RSRs (resurvey settlement registers) have gone missing. Making wrong usage of land acquisition is another trick that the land sharks have adopted in Vizag region.
“Whenever, there is a land acquisition proposal, land sharks manage to include fictitious names in the records, despite the land extent being poramboke government land. The idea is to make money from land acquisition out of the government land. It the recent time they tried to corner about 300 acres in Koduru in Anakapalle and another 450 acres in Rajeevpeta in Nakkapalli,” says Mr. Amarnath.
Farmers are being coerced to part with their land by land sharks, so that they sell back the same land to government at a higher price under land pooling scheme, according to Vishnu Kumar Raju, MLA.
As per GO 304, the government has passed an order for land pooling in Sowbhagyapuram in Pendurthi mandal (128.94 acres), Dabbanda in Anandapuram (114.23), Kommadi in Visakhapatnam (rural) (116.64), Nerellavalasa in Bheemunipatnam (114.34) and Gandigundam in Anandapuram (69).
