VIJAYAWADA: To wind up the acquisition of land required for the development of Amaravati, the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA) will invoke the new land acquisition act.
By doing so, the authority plans to acquire the pending 2,400 acres in the villages which have been defiant of Land Pooling Scheme (LPS).
While the State government procured close to 33,500 acres of land from the 29 villages of the capital region, it has been facing resistance from the landholders of Undavalli, Penumaka and Nidamarru villages.
The villagers have been opposing the take over of thousands of acres of fertile lands and have remained defiant for the last couple of years.
However, after the new Act -- The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (AP Amendment) Act, 2017 -- received the President’s nod in May this year, the authority is moving towards invoking it.
For the uninitiated, the new Act does away with the clause of having consent of the landholder and the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) for land acquisition.
“We are awaiting the notification of the rules under the new land acquisition Act. Once that is done, the remaining land procurement of about 2,400 acres will be quickly done,” the Commissioner of APCRDA, Cherukuri Sreedhar, said. It maybe recalled that the issue of land acquisition has been a bone of contention between the farmers and the State government for the last couple of years. Several political parties, including the principal Opposition YSRC, Jana Sena and others, vehemently opposed the government’s idea and extended support to the landholders.
However, the APCRDA maintains that acquisition of land was necessary for completing the planned infrastructure works. An official, on the condition of anonymity, explained that the authority has waiting for the farmers to join the LPS.
“We have given enough time for the landholders to opt for either LPS or land acquisition. We have also considered the requests of a few farmers who initially were against LPS, but later joined. Now, we are going ahead with the new land acquisition Act,” the official said.