KRISHNAGIRI: As the state government announced last December its move to merge some rural villages with nearby urban local bodies and upgrade the village panchayat into town panchayats, members of the district administration conducted a meeting at the collectorate on Tuesday to get people’s opinion on it.
As some people objected to the merger, few others asked the officials to merge more villages into Krishnagiri municipality.
Supporting the merger of Kattiganapalli panchayat with Krishnagiri Municipality, S K Nawab, DMK Krishnagiri town secretary said, already a resolution was passed in Krishnagiri municipality to merge eight village panchayats to it. However, the government later considered to merge only one panchayat. At least two more panchayats like Baiyanapalli and Venkatapuram should also be merged to evade the tollgate issue.
He also asked the officials to remove about 10,000 voters out of 56,000 voters from Krishnagiri municipality as they are not presently residing in the municipal limits.
Similarly, P Prakash, a farmer from Berandapalli panchayat, said that officials had planned to merge seven village panchayats with Hosur City Municipal Corporation (HCMC) fully or partially, but six villages from Berandapalli panchayat should not be merged with HCMC because around 800 acres of farmland in this village cultivate various crops like tomatoes, cabbage, and others using water from Kelavarapalli Dam and once they get merged with HCMC, livelihood of farmers will be affected.
T Kothandaraman, a farmer from Nallur panchayat, said that Begepalli and Nallur panchayats were proposed to be merged with HCMC. These villages which are rich in agriculture, it will uproot the livelihood of farmers if they get urbanised. Also, higher water tax and house tax in urban set up will make farmers suffer and this will then lead to agricultural lands turning into plots.
Over 350 farmers from Hosur, Krishnagiri, Shoolagiri, and surrounding areas took part in the meeting.
Krishnagiri Collector C Dinesh Kumar assured the people that the issues that are raised in the meeting will be taken to the State government and people can meet him to discuss more issues.
DRO A Sathanaikural and Hosur sub-collector RA Priyanga were also present in the meeting.