By M H Ahssan
Pataperumallapuram, a nondescript village in East Godavari district looked like a warzone on Tuesday with farmers and police fighting a pitched battle, with the former refusing to part with their land for the Kakinada Special Economic Zone (KSEZ).
The revenue department’s haste in coercing them to part with the land for a mere Rs 3 lakh per acre has upset the farmers. “The promoters will in turn sell the land at Rs 40 lakh per acre to the big players ready to invest in KSEZ,” a village elder told TOI.
Highlighting the plight of small farmers, Gopalakrishna of district Rythu Coolie Sangham said they were unable to get cultivable land elsewhere at the amount that was being offered to them as compensation. The portbased multi-product KSEZ, coming up in nearly 10,000 acres, is set to wipe out 16 villages in U Kothapalli and Thondangi mandals. While the promoters (Kakinada Sea Ports Ltd, GMR group, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd of Delhi, besides the state government) claim that the KSEZ would catapult the district by attracting investments worth over Rs 50,000 crore, anti-SEZ activists are crying foul over the tall claims.
Stating that thousands of ryots, farm labour, fishermen and artisans have been displaced with the use of brute force, K Rajendra Kumar of Kadali Network, spearheading the movement against the SEZ, demanded that the land be reverted to the affected farmers. Sources said the administration deployed revenue and police authorities to illegally fence both the acquired as well as unsold land.
“The cardinal principle that cultivable land should not be converted to set up industries has been ignored in this land acquisition process,” KSEZ Vyathireka Porata Samithi convenor Ch Suryanarayana Murthy alleged. The KSEZ has already acquired 6,500 acres — 5,800 acres through consent award and the rest by invoking the Land Acquisition Act.
That the lands proposed to be acquired are fertile and there are other lands which are fallow and infertile which can be acquired is the contention of the ryots and the fishermen. “In Moolapeta village alone, ryots are in possession of nearly 4,700 acres which the promoters are eyeing,” Srinivasa Rao of district fishermen samakhya said.
Sources said the government shifted the KSEZ site in 2005 bowing to pressure from real estate lobby and political leaders — it had initially notified 10,000 acres in Kakinada rural, Pithapuram and Samalkot mandals. “There is a clear profit motive in setting up an SEZ, that’s why big industrialists enter it. Let the industries buy land directly from the willing farmers. Why should they sell it to the promoters who are acting more like real estate brokers,” Gopalakrishna said.
Joining the issue, Murthy said that besides police repression the administration facilitating unlawful registration of fertile land to KSEZ Pvt Ltd in itself is a gross violation of the SEZ Act. However, the promoters said that the SEZ once completed would change the entire economic scenario of East Godavari.
HC Directive Against using Force for Acquiring Land
A division bench of the AP High Court on Wednesday directed the state government not to use police force to take physical possession of land from farmers for the sake of the developer of the Kakinada Special Economic Zone (KSEZ).
The bench comprising Chief Justice Anil Ramesh Dave and Justice R Subhash Reddy, while hearing a petition filed by KSEZ Vyathireka Porata Committee, wondered why the police were being used in this case. It, however, said it cannot restrain purchasers from taking possession of the land.
Appearing for the farmers, whose lands are now being taken away for KSEZ, senior counsel Bojja Tarakam said the KSEZ developer was seeking to take over land from farmers with the help of the police force.
When it was brought to the notice of the bench by the government counsel that the farmers themselves sold their lands to the developer, the bench said it cannot do much in such a situation.
Saying that the developer played a fraud on the farmers by purchasing from them the lands already notified by the government for acquisition, Tarakam sought such land transactions to be declared as invalid as they were done under coercion and during the pendency of a land acquisition notification.
No comments:
Post a Comment