A roundtable hosted by the Andhra Pradesh Agricultural Workers Union(APAWU) on Tuesday urged the YSR Congress Party government to continue with the Andhra Pradesh Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act in its original form.
The amendments to the Act carried out by the previous Telugu Desam Party government allowed sale of such lands 20 years after the date of assignment to Dalits. But the Jagan Mohan Reddy government proposes to allow sale of such lands 10 years after they were assigned to landless poor.
The proposal dilutes the very purpose of the Act, which prohibited transfers of assigned lands given to Dalits. Hence the Act should be retained in its original form, felt APAWU Prakasam District Secretary K. Anjaneyulu while briefing on the resolutions adopted at the meeting.
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The Act was enacted only following a long struggle by Dalit organisations for protection to the landless poor in the year 1977 as influential persons at the grassroots level usurped the lands by various “dubious means”, recalled APAWU district president Jala Anjaiah.
At least half of the over 55 lakh acres distributed to Dalits in undivided Andhra Pradesh had gone out of the hands of the beneficiaries, lamented Bharatiya Kisan Mazdoor Union district secretary K.Venkata Rao. The amendment to the Act to allow sale of lands assigned to Dalits after 10 years now, would go against the interests of the Dalits, he opined.