Scheduled Tribe families rendered homeless in Sachin's 'adopted village'

IRLA Seenaiah's small thatched hut was razed to make way for a road. It was part of an admin initiative to turn his village Puttamraju Vari Kandriga in Nellore district into a model village. He and people like him were promised pucca houses for giving up their huts. Seenaiah has been waiting for 18 months. This is the village adopted by former cricketer Sanchin Tendulkar.
"People have opinions that there should be less teams. But we need to find a solution and work towards it together to make cricket a global sport and not have just 8-12 countries compete all the time and be happy with that," the Indian cricket legend sa
"People have opinions that there should be less teams. But we need to find a solution and work towards it together to make cricket a global sport and not have just 8-12 countries compete all the time and be happy with that," the Indian cricket legend sa

NELLORE/TIRUPATI: IRLA Seenaiah's small thatched hut was razed to make way for a road. It was part of an admin initiative to turn his village Puttamraju Vari Kandriga in Nellore district into a model village. He and people like him were promised pucca houses for giving up their huts. Seenaiah has been waiting for 18 months. This is the village adopted by former cricketer Sanchin Tendulkar.

Since losing their dwellings, Seenaiah and 20 other Scheduled Tribe families of the star village have been taking shelter in huts thatched with plastic sheets.

It all started in 2005 when the then joint collector Rekha Rani accidentally met Tendulkar on an international flight. Impressed by her story of development activities taken up by her administration in Puttamraju Vari Kandriga, a hamlet of 115 families, Tendulkar promised to adopt the village. He was ‘inspired’ by a call to celebs of his sort by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Soon an action plan was prepared for the adoption and Tendulkar visited the village to lay the foundation stone for development projects.

During that visit, Tendulkar ducked into the huts of Seenaiah and other ST families and urged them to cooperate with the road expansion plans of the administration and promised to get pucca houses built for them. In the one and a half year since then, several developmental works were taken up including taps and toilets for every house, reinforced concrete roads, a dump yard, a community hall and a burial ground for the village. Tendulkar even funded a cricket ground, budgeted for Rs 1.3 crore. While Tendulkar spent Rs 2.96 crore from his MPLADS allocation, the administration pitched in with Rs 3 crore.

All seemed hunky dory, but 18 months on, the ST families who gave up their thatched huts remain homeless. The top officials and the district collector who were in on it with Tendulkar have since been transferred. Now, the families  ae clueless whom to approach. Tendulkar hasn’t turned up in these parts since then.

"The rains have started in Nellore. Until the issue is sorted out, we want the authorities to provide us shelter in the local school or the new community hall,” Seenaiah told New Indian Express.

On Thursday morning, Parri Balakrishna managed to approach V Chamundeswarinath, a friend of Tendulkar and a close associate, in Tirupati. The friend did not know anything. "There was no plan for pucca houses in the report prepared by the administration. However, the issue will be taken up with the officials," Chamundeswarinath told New Indian Express.

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