Vijayawada: The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) authorities have stopped water and power supply to people living on the Krishna river bund, as part of efforts to clear encroachments on Krishna Karakatta.
The civic authorities had tried to evacuate the residents of Krishna-lanka Karakatta, Fishermen Ghat and Ram Nagar earlier too but in vain.
The government issued GO No. 1156 allowing the municipal commissioner to remove the encroachments on Krishna Karakatta but it led to differences among the leaders which resulted in non-implementation of the GO.
Later, the government issued anther GO No. 638, which was meant at enumerating people inhabiting riverbeds, river boundaries and other adjacent areas. The government asked the corporation to conduct a survey of people living on patta, non-patta and non-objectionable encroachments.
However, the task could not be completed due to opposition from the political parties. Eviction of people living on Karakatta has remained a sensitive issue since long as political leaders have been fearing of losing their vote bank, as there are more than 10,000 people living on Karakatta.
However, following the instructions of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu recently, officials brought down around 5,000 houses and relocated them to areas in Singhi Nagar. It is learnt that the civic officials need to demolish another 6,000 houses along the riverbed for the ongoing Pushkaralu and the proposed Krishna water front tourism project.
To oppose the CM’s orders and prevent demolition of their houses, the people of Krishnalanka Karakatta formed a Parirakshana Committee and they even obstructed the revenue officials from conducting a survey in their area recently.
The Krishnalanka Karakatta Parirakshana Committee members demanded the authorities to withdraw the proposal of demolishing their houses in the name of beautification of the river front and they also wanted the officials to issue documents to their houses for which they staged “Chalo Corporation” on July 12.
“We want them to evacuate for the tourism project. We will relocate them to some other place,” said Pradeep Kumar, town planning officer, VMC.
