Hyderabad: Making it clear that it is a mandate on the part of the state government to provide Resettlement & Rehabilitation to the artisans and agriculture labourers who have been affected with land acquisition under the Land Acquisition Act 2013, the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday directed the Telangana government to place the information before it with regard to the relief provided to the affected families in Palamuru Ranga Reddy Lift Irrigation Scheme and Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation Project.
A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice J. Uma Devi was dealing with a PIL by Mahbubnagar District Palamoori Migrant Labour Union represented by its president P. Narayana Swami seeking to declare the action of the state government in not identifying effectively the project affected families as illegal.
Mr Shashi Kiran, counsel for the petitioner, told the court that the state government has acquired thousands of acres of agriculture lands for both the projects, but it has not extending the benefits of Rehabilitation and Resettlement to the affected families other than land owners. He submitted that as per the Act 2013, the government has to constitute the special committees to identify the affected families, but so far it has not constituted the committees and the authorities have completed the identification of the affected families for the name sake. The authorities claimed that there are only 112 affected people in one mandal though they had acquired more than 20,000 acres for the scheme.
The bench told the counsel to identify at least 10 to 15 families from the each mandal and place list before the court so that it could question the authorities.
