VIJAYAWADA: Tension prevailed at Gulabithota on BRTS Road on Tuesday, with around 2000 students, including alumni of SRR & CVR Government College, staging a protest rally demanding government action against persons, who had allegedly encroached 6.67 acre of land belonging to the college. Students, backed by the college management and several students’ unions, marched towards the controversial land in Gulabithota from the college in Machavaram and raised slogans against the State government and politicians for failing to protect the college land from encroachers.
Angry students destroyed boards planted on the disputed site where some construction had already taken place. They demanded that authorities should bring bulldozers to demolish the illegally constructed buildings on the college land. When asked, the college management clarified that the land belonged to the college. In 1952, part of the land, measuring 6.67 acre, had been given to a tenant farmer, Pedarla Narasimha Rao on lease by the college management.
“While continuing as a tenant farmer, Narasimha Rao illegally obtained a patta in his name, under the provisions of Estate Abolition Act. When we, on expiry of the lease, demanded that he vacate the land, he issued a notice in 1960 claiming ownership and sold the land to other persons,” said college alumni Cherukuri Krishna Kumar and former deputy mayor of Vijayawada. On January 13, 2018, the college management came to know that a few persons had taken up construction works in the land and complained about the issue to the district collector, revenue officials and the police.
“Land of even the first college to have been established in Vijayawada is not spared by encroachers. With the help of officials, we could have stopped the construction work on the site. There should be an intervention from the government side to protect the land from the clutches of encroachers,” Cherukuri Krishna Kumar said.The students’ unions however, have warned that government should take steps to hand over the land to the college by vacating it, failing which they would start an indefinite hunger strike.
Both students’ unions and alumni associations had been fighting to protect the college land, but their cries had been silenced by money and power, said Ravi Chandra, an alumnus of SRR & CVR and state president of Progressive Democratic Students Union. “Local politicians threatened us, yet we fought for the cause. We will not rest till justice is done to our college,” he said.
Journey of the College
The college was set up in a building near the old bus stand way back in 1937.
After Raja Rangaiah Apparao (SRR) and Chunduri Venkata Reddy (CVR) donated nine acre of land, the college was shifted to Machavaram in 1939.
College had been functioning on three acre of land and the remaining portion at Gulabithota area was left vacant.
Tenant farmer Pedarla Narasimha Rao took a lease of the college land for J225 per year in 1945.
He later obtained fake pattas and claimed ownership. The dispute has been going on for about two decades.