Land acquired for poor lies unutilised

Kakinada: Hundreds of acres of land remain idle without any use in East Godavari district though it was acqu-ired from the farmers.

The land acquisition was done four to seven years ago to distribute house sites to the poor. The compensation also has been given to most of the farmers. But, till now the poor could not get house sites.

“The farmers have lost the land and the poor have not got house sites. The gove-rnment could lose econo-mic loss in the shape of ag-riculture crops,” said P.V. S.S.S. Murthy, a RTI acti-vist and president of Anti-Corruption People Awareness Society.

He got the information of vacant lands from the government which acquired from the farmers in the district through RTI.

According to information, the land has been acquired four to seven years back, but, it could not be distributed to the poor for house purposes due to various re-asons like low lying areas, political interventions and others.

“The land has been acq-uired without identification of beneficiaries. Usu-ally the government acqu-ires land for housing or other purposes according to demand as per the beneficiaries. But land acquisition has not been done according to procedures,” said Murthy.

He approached the High Court seeking house sites to the poor who submitted representations to the officials in Pithapuram mandal. The High Court also has given direction to district administration to allot house sites to the petitioners within four months.

According to sources, the people representatives ma-de several queries in selecting beneficiaries and they did not co-operate with the officials to complete the process. In some lands, especially in Konaseema area the people did not come forward to take the sites due to low lying areas and they are not able to level the sites during the construction of houses.

“We have distributed the land for housing purposes to the poor by levelling the sites during ‘Neeru-Chettu’ programme. But in Pedap-udi and Samalkot mandals, the sites distribution is yet to be done,” said Kakinada Revenue Divisional Officer B.R. Ambedkar.