The formation of new districts by the State government based on Parliamentary constituencies, will enhance the number of districts from the existing 13 to 25. Then Araku will become a ‘behemoth’ of a district, as it will be carved out of four existing districts and most importantly it falls under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution (The schedule protects tribal interests).
At present, Araku is a Parliamentary constituency, reserved for schedule tribes, and is under Visakhapatnam district. It has seven Assembly segments comprising Palakonda of Srikakulam district, Kurupam, Parvathipuram and Salur, all from Vizianagaram district, Araku and Paderu from Visakhapatnam district and Rampachodavaram from East Godavari district.
All the Assembly segments are reserved constituencies (ST) and come under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution.
Geographically apart from being mountainous, densely forested and lacking proper connectivity, the left wing extremists (LWE) CPI (Maoist) have considerable sway in many of its mandals.
Most importantly, the basic idea of cutting down the distance between the mandal headquarters and district headquarters is not served, said Aja Sarma of Forum for Development of North Andhra (FDNA).
The distance from Araku to Palakonda is around 131 km and the travel time is over 3 hrs 40 minutes, to Parvathipuram is 104 km and it takes about 3 hrs 25 min, Rampachodavaram is around 281 km away and the travel time is over 6 hours and Kurupam is 133 km away from Araku and the travel time is over 5 hours.
What is the point of the reorganisation exercise at all if it does not shorten distances and ends up increasing existing long distances, questioned V.S. Krishna of Human Rights Forum (HRF).
With respect to the Fifth Schedule region, HRF feels that each of the existing Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) headquarters can be formed into a new district.
This would mean Seethampeta in Srikakulam district, Parvathipuram in Vizianagaram, Paderu in Visakhapatnam district, Rampachodavaram in East Godavari, Kota Ramchandrapuram (located in Buttaigudem mandal) in West Godavari and the recently created Chintur ITDA in erstwhile Khammam district, be converted into separate tribal districts instead of packing all under one and making things difficult both for the people and the administrators, said Mr. Krishna.
