HC stays AP’s move to annul allotment of plots to farmers in Amaravati region

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has issued an interim order staying implementation of GO316 and its related notices dealing with annulling the allotted residential and commercial plots to the farmers in assigned lands located in the capital city Amaravati region.

A single-judge bench of Justice D Ramesh heard a petition filed by the affected farmers and directed the state government on Wednesday to avoid taking any hasty decision as regards its plan to take back the plots allotted to the farmers. The court served notices to chief secretary, AMRDA, special deputy collector and others, and directed them to file counter-affidavits. It posted the case for the next hearing after four weeks.

The previous TD government took up land pooling for construction of the capital city of Amaravati. It categorised the farmers having assigned lands and announced packages for them in lieu of taking their lands in land pooling. Those who purchased such lands from the farmers much earlier than the government’s announcement of land pooling, were declared as category (4) in the GO 41.

Accordingly, each farmer was allotted 500 square feet of residential area and 50 square feet of commercial area.

However, those who got allotment of both residential and commercial areas, hailing from Nallapadu village of Thullur mandal in Guntur district, received show-cause notices as to why their allotments should not to be cancelled. These persons, then, moved the high court.

Petitioners’ counsels Adinarayana Rao and others argued that the state government was not having any authority to serve notices to the farmers to cancel their allotment of residential and commercial plots for adding their land into land pooling system.