Land row puts a Telangana village at odds with TRS
VEMULAGHAT: The mood in Vemulaghat, a sleepy village in Thoguta block, Siddipet district, Telangana is one of anger against the K Chandrashekar Rao-led government. A majority of the 4,000odd villagers has taken a vow not to vote for the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi in the December 7 assembly elections.
The villagers have been at war with the state government since June 2016, when it decided to acquire their land for the construction of the Mallannasagar reservoir as part of the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme on the Godavari River.
The reservoir, proposed to be constructed at a cost of ~9,800 crore, will have a 50 thousand million cubic feet (tmc) capacity, which will be used to irrigate 12 lakh acres in Siddipet, Medak and Ranga Reddy districts.
The reservoir will displace nearly 30,000 people in eight major villages and six other hamlets and submerge 21,000 acres of rich agricultural land. Vemulaghat is the biggest village among those affected and will lose at least 5,300 acres of land. It is also the only village which has held out against the state’s overtures and threats.
“For the last two years, our village has been virtually under siege by police. We braved arrests, lathi-charges and cases, but we did not give up our fight. They managed to lure some of our villagers and forced them to sign documents transferring their land to the government, but a majority has refused to give up,” said Srinivas Reddy, former sarpanch of Vemulaghat.
The villagers of Vemulaghat know that they cannot stop the Mallannasagar project. “We have been asking for a fair compensation under the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. But the TRS government initially sought to acquire land through an administrative order (GO No. 123); after the high
court struck it down, it brought in its own land acquisition act which was nothing but a modified version of the earlier government order,” Reddy added.
The government offered ~6 lakh per acre as compensation, but the villagers are demanding at least three times that as per the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
While continuing the battle in the courts, the villagers have been on a relay hunger strike since June 4, 2016 in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the village.
With elections round the corner,
villagers have got an opportunity to vent out their anger. “In 2014, we supported the TRS, but this time, we have made a collective decision not to vote for it,” said Vinay, a student activist.
TRS candidate for Dubbak constituency under which the village comes S Ramalinga Reddy said he had gone to the village a couple of months ago but not after campaigning began. “Nevertheless, we have our party workers from the village who are campaigning. The response from the people in submergence villages is not as bad as is being projected.”