Action plan to mend fences with Polavaram oustees

The plan will mainly focus on the pleas of the project-affected persons for more succour

Batting for better deal: Adivasi leader and former MLA Punem Singanna Dora from YSRC speaking at a meeting on R&R package for the victims of the Indira Sagar Project in Eluru on Saturday. Photo: A.V.G. Prasad

The State government is set to get into a mission mode to help the multi-crore Indira Sagar Polavaram project overcome the roadblocks put up by the belligerent project victims. Social Welfare Minister Pitani Satyanarayana said at a review meeting on the project progress with the leaders from all political parties and the officials here on Saturday that a plan of action has been charted out to mend fences with the project victims and seek their cooperation for speedy completion of the project.

The plan will mainly focus on the pleas of the project-affected persons for more succour under the Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) package and thereby ensure that the inhabitants of all the seven villages facing submergence are evicted at the earliest.

A Special Officer in the cadre of Sub Collector will be posted in each of these submergence villages —Devaragondi, Mamidigondi, Totagondi, Ramayyapet, Pidipaka, Singanapalli and Chegondipalli—with an assignment to move the 1,785 families out of their ancestral villages.

The Special Officer-led teams will also strive to address certain bottlenecks which hampered the process of land acquisition for building houses for the project victims under the R&R package.

In a note on the status of the R&R package submitted to the Minister, Collector G. Vanimohan said the district administration had acquired land to the extent of 358 acres for construction of R&R colonies for the project victims from 27 submergence villages as against the requirement of 468 acres.

An extent of 2000 acres of agricultural land was acquired for payment of land to land compensation to the victims as against the requirement of 3,252 acres.

Even as the government is eager to speed up the project by evicting the victims from their villages, they are seeking to buy some more time.

“We are not against the project and we will have to move out. But eviction should be deferred until the R&R colonies are built with all the amenities.

The project head works should be suspended till then”, Dorababu, one of the project oustees from Pidipaka, requested the Minister. The project for which a foundation stone was laid by the then Chief Minister late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in 2004, is failing to inch ahead in view of the stalling of works by the project victims demanding a better R&R package.