Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government is planning to acquire land on a large-scale basis after the Central government’s approval has come for various road projects in the state. The State government is already busy acquiring land for construction of the new capital, airports, sea ports and other development activities. According to the Mini-stry of National High-ways Authority (MNHA), it is the State government’s prime responsibility to hand over land for road projects.
Officials say that nearly 7,500 acres of land is required for the Outer Ring Road project around Amaravati, the proposed new capital city, in the Krishna, Guntur and West Godavari districts within a 200-km radius.
The only option before the government is to acquire land from farmers, who opposed the acquisition when the government first proposed an eight-lane outer ring road for Amaravati. Similarly, nearly 1,000 acres of land has to be acquired for the Machilipatnam-Vijaya-wada four-lane road expansion project.
Landowners in various parts of the stretch have raised objections over this as the government has not carried out the alignment plan until now.
The AP government’s land requirements for two other important road projects need to be met: the one for Rayalaseema to Bengaluru needs 10,000 acres while the one from Tada to Itchapuram calls for another 15,000 acres.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is very keen on completing both these projects. The seashore-based Tada-Itchapuram road project would give a boost to tourism while the government has given top priority to the Amaravati-Bengaluru road as would reduce the distance from Rayalaseema district to Amaravati and develop connectivity to Benga-luru.
The Centre has approved another 13 projects, but land acquisition for them may not be difficult with land prices being cheap in other parts of the state, an official said on condition of anonymity.
However, the State government should provide land for all required road projects, using methods, such as land pooling, if necessary, with the MNHA releasing funds for project implementation.
National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) project director Suresh Kumar said that the NHAI Act of 1956 should be followed for land acquisition and that if the State government took up the responsibility of acquiring land, it should do so as per their rules.
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