TD’s efforts to pacify farmers bear fruits Farmers avoid land pooling protest

The efforts of the Telugu Desam leaders and ministers towards pacifying farmers to offer their lands for capital construction has yielded good results as most farmers stayed away from the ongoing 48-hour “Deeksha” to oppose taking farmlands for new capital.

The government is also offering a special package of `25 lakh to each village that completes 80 per cent agreement processes to speed up the land possession. The CRDA has collected 33,600 acre of farmland, but it has to complete the land agreement process with farmers to get total possession of the collected lands.

Farmers had earlier been reluctant to complete the agreement processes, but after intervention of the CRDA vice-chairman and municipal administration minister P. Narayana, the CRDA managed to complete land agreement processes for 13,886 acre of collected lands.

As the AP Cabinet has decided to start the capital construction works on June 6, the CRDA is putting in all efforts to get possession of the 33,600 acre of land by completing the agreement processes by the end of May.

The government had promised agriculture loan waiver as a one-time settlement against installments but it had failed to implement it properly due to various cause.

Realising the same, CRDA, Revenue and other departments took steps to implement the loan waiver. This delay of the loan waiver scheme was the main cause behind the del- ayed agreement processes.

Mr Narayana, who camped in the capital region villages several times to clear the doubts of the farmers, said that loan waiver amounts had been deposited into 21,300 bank accounts of beneficiary farmers of the capital region. Amounts of only 1,700 farmers remained and these would be completed by May 15.

Appealing to the farmers to complete the agreement process by collecting annuity cheques, he announced that the first five villages to complete 80 per cent agreement process would get a special package of `25 lakh each for local development.

He said that Ainavolu village led in offering farmlands to CRDA under LPS and announced `5 lakh extra to the village.