Capital punishment

Land acquisition for Andhra Pradesh’s proposed capital leaves farmers and landowners at their wits’ end.

The State government has proposed a range of compensation measures for landowners as part of the land pooling scheme—developed residential plots of 9,000 square feet for every acre of land foregone and 200 or 300 square feet of commercial space in the new city based on the category of farmland acquired, dry or wet. Dry lands are those that are irrigated by canals and wet lands are generally riverside plots where water is available at about 10 feet below the ground. There is also an annual monetary compensation of Rs.30,000 an acre for dry land and Rs.50,000 an acre for wet land, with a 10 per cent increase every year for the next 10 years.

This has found many takers among the landed families. An overwhelming majority of them own less than five acres (one acre = 0.4 hectare), and a good number of them are from the Kamma community, which the Chief Minister belongs to. They constitute the traditional social base of the Telugu Desam Party. That is one of the reasons why, political analysts say, Chandrababu Naidu chose this region, overlooking the decentralised model suggested by a committee that was formed by the previous Central government to formulate a plan for the new capital. The government also overlooked the apprehensions expressed by the committee headed by the late bureaucrat Sivaramakrishnan. The committee foresaw a “threat to the economy of the state” owing to “environmental degradation” and loss of agriculture. According to the State’s Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister Ponguru Narayana, about half of these lands have been “acquired” so far.

Another grouse is that owners of assigned lands will not get what general category owners get. The residential space in lieu of every acre foregone would be 200 square yards less than those for regular landowners. The commercial space that they would get is also half that for regular landowners in the case of dry land and 100 square yards less in the case of wet land.

“An MP came here last December and asked us if we would sell 100 acres to him. An MLA also visited us looking for land. He wanted to see our bank passbooks to ascertain land ownership. He backed off when he realised that these are assigned lands after his meeting with the Guntur Collector,” said one villager. Some others said that about 20 TDP leaders had visited the area in April this year expressing interest in buying lands, but they refused.

In a controversial move that is likely to see protests by farmers and Opposition parties, the Andhra Pradesh government has issued a notification to acquire land in 10 villages in the proposed capital region under the Land Acquisition Act.

A notification was issued late Thursday night designating Special Deputy Collectors presently working under the AP Government’s Land Pooling Scheme as officers “to perform all functions of Collector under section 3 (g) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 read with rule 2(1) (d) of Andhra Pradesh State Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Rules, 2014.”