Andhra Pradesh govt takes possession of 850 acres land for new capital

Setting the state capital building plan rolling, the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) has started signing agreements with land owners and farmers in the capital region starting from Tulluru Mandal under the land-pooling scheme. On Wednesday, CRDA took possession of 850 acres of land from 540 farmers.

“After scrutinizing the land documents, and if everything is clear, we go through a legal system of signing irrevocable agreements with the farmers. It is a long process of signing documents and crosschecking everything. The compensation amount corresponding to the size of land given by the farmer is given in cheques. By Thursday evening, we expect to complete formalities of signing agreements with nearly 800 farmers involving 1550 acres of land. It will take at least a month to take possession of the entire land of just over 32,000 acres,” Joint Collector of Guntur Dr C Sridhar, who is in-charge of land pooling in Tulluru Mandal of Guntur District, said Wednesday morning.

Urban Development and Municipal Administration Minister Dr P Narayana who has been assigned the task of land-pooling and procurement for the new capital city near Vijayawada said on Wednesday that the government has received consent from farmers to the extent of 32,450 acres in 29 villages in Tulluru, Tadepalli and Mangalagiri Mandals of Guntur District, the area where the core capital on the south bank of river Krishna will come up.

“About 21,000 farmers own this land and they have consented to give their land for the building of the state capital under the land-pooling system in lieu of compensation. We have already given compensation cheques to more than 500 farmers with whom agreements have been signed and a sum of Rs 1.25 crores has been paid in two days,” Dr Narayana said.

The signing of agreements with farmers started in Nelapadu village of Tulluru Mandal, the centre of core capital region, according to CRDA Commissiner N Srikanth. The exercise is being conducted in 26 units — each unit is one village; a bigger village is divided into two units —and Revenue Department officials headed by Joint Collectors are overseeing the process.

“Farmers owning as little as 450 sq yards of land to families owning up to 100 acres have given their consent. On Tuesday, a family of farmers of Nelapadu jointly owning 80 acres signed the agreement,” Joint Collector Dr C Sridhar said. Dhanekula Subba Rao, the surpanch of Nelapadu, was the first person to sign the agreement after giving ownership of his 3 acres land.

“My family, including my father Rama Rao and my brother, has given total 52 acres. We gave away whatever land we owned. They have already started leveling my land as I have harvested the cotton crop last month. I am happy because not only am I participating in the land pooling scheme to build our state’s capital but also getting a decent compensation,” Rao said Wednesday.

The Urban Development and Municipal Administration Department had released a gazette notification for starting the process of signing of agreements starting from Nelapadu village. “This village has 1410 acres land of which 1,220 acres is owned by 685 farmers, all of whom have agreed to pool their land. Farmers of this village were the first to agree to land-pooling and gave written consents almost two months ago. So we decided to start the process of taking possession of land from this village,” Minister Dr Narayana said.

The Minister said that Revenue and Land Survey officials will camp in the villages in rented accommodations till the process is over and all the land is taken possession by the government. Dry land and wetland owners get Rs 30,000 per acre and Rs 50,000 per acre respectively per annum as compensation with an increase of 10 per cent per acre every year.

Besides this, the compensation package includes 1000 sq yards residential land and 200 sq yards commercial given to dry land farmers at a suitable site while wetland owners get 1000 sq yards residential land and 450 sq yards commercial land.

Minister Dr Narayana says the process of verifying ownership documents and signing agreements with landowners may take more than a month. Once the process is complete, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will lay the foundation stone for construction of the new capital in June or July.

Source:: Indian Express