The Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Karnataka is launching a Statewide agitation in the last week of March in protest against the drive to recover encroached government land from small farmers and forest dwellers, going against the earlier promise of the government that big land-grabbers would be targeted.
Speaking to presspersons on Wednesday, CPI(M) State Secretary G.V. Sreerama Reddy said taluk-level land grant committees, authorised to review applications from unauthorised cultivators for regularisations, had become defunct and lakhs of applications had piled up. He said the agitation would also focus on problems in housing, with about 32 lakh families in the State without housing sites. District authorities were unable to buy land for housing sites since the prices fixed for acquisition were too low, he added.
He said the party would later be launching an agitation on the acute water crisis in the nine districts of central Karnataka. The G.S. Paramashivaiah committee report that seeks to irrigate the parched districts of Bayaluseeme region has not been the focus of successive governments, he added.
