Claiming that amendments made by the erstwhile Telugu Desam Party government in Andhra Pradesh to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013 (LARR 2013) had adversely affected the rights of livelihood of land owners and farmers in the capital Amaravati region, social activist Medha Patkar will make a representation to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy urging him to repeal the amendment.
On behalf of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), an alliance of hundreds of progressive people’s organisations, Ms. Patkar, one of its founders, will meet Mr. Reddy on the issue.
“The amendments are violative of the Constitutional rights of citizens as key aspects like consent provisions, social impact assessment, participation of representative local bodies in acquisition of land have been exempted,” said B. Ramakrishnam Raju, member of the Advisory Council, NAPM. “We plan to bring Ms. Patkar here to take up the issue as it involves welfare of a large number of farmers,” said Mr. Raju.
Ms. Patkar had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court last year with a plea seeking to strike down what she called “contradictory amendments” made by Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Jharkhand to the LARR 2013.
The proposed amendments to the land laws approved by the Centre paved the way for the TDP government to reduce the acquisition of private farm lands to a simple agreement initiated by the District Collector. “The statutory change bypassed the procedures the LARR had put in place, expediting land acquisition for the new capital Amaravati,” said Mr. Raju.
Reminding that even the Modi governmentin 2014 had attempted to undo the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 but had to drop the plan after it met with stiff opposition from the public, Mr. Raju said the amendments proposed by the Centre then had provisions similar to Andhra Pradesh’s current amendments.
Capital land use
“We also want to know what the government intends to do with the 35,000 acres of land taken over by the Chandrababu Naidu government under land-pooling from the farmers of the capital region,” said Mr. Raju.
Citing reports of the Chief Minister’s plans to junk many proposed projects in the capital region as they are said to be ‘steeped in corruption’, Mr. Raju said revoking the amendments to the land laws would only ‘right’ another ‘wrong’.
