Mancherial: A tense situation prevailed in Kakunur village in Jaipur mandal on Monday when police and forest officials attempted to take back forest land that the locals said they were cultivating for a long time by villagers.
Some villagers climbed on to a water tank and threatened to commit suicide if the state government failed to regularise the forest land in their names. The villagers said they had been fighting for regularisation of the land for the last 22 years.
The situation became tense when the forest staff came to the village to prepare the ground with tractors for the state government’s Haritha Haram programme which is scheduled to begin later this month.
The forest officials put up signboards stating that 1,600 acres of land located on the Kakunaru shivar was forest land. The villagers say they have been cultivating the nearly 2,000 acres in Surveys No. 154 and 185 for several years.
There is much dispute over locals and tribals cultivating forest lands. In the case of tribals, there is bitterness over the government delaying providing land ownership documents under the Recognition of Forest Rights (ROFR) Act.
Additionally, nearly 2 lakh tribal farmers who were cultivating forest lands for long time and had land rights under the ROFR in old Adilabad, Warangal, Khammam, Karimnagar and Mahabubnagar districts will not be covered under group insurance scheme for farmers to be implemented from August 15 in the state.
