Hyderabad: BJP MLA Raghunandan Rao accuses minister of land grab

Hyderabad: BJP Dubbaka MLA M Raghunandan Rao on Tuesday made sensational allegations against Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy, accusing him of resorting to large-scale land-grabbing.

Addressing the media here, Rao rolled out details of how the minister has built three farmhouses. He said it exposes the indiscriminate land-grabbing by the ruling party leaders.

Levelling specific charges, Rao said the minister had encroached by building a six metre wall beyond the river margin into the Krishna and filling it to adjacent land level.

"He constructed a farmhouse on about 160 acres in Chandurmandal of Wanaparthy district. But, the catch is that the actual land registered was only 80 acres; the compound wall erected around the land is160 acres", he alleged.

The MLA noted that when an RTI petition was filed for records it revealed that the

MRO responded saying there are no details as phani (land record) was burnt in a fire accident in the office on October 21, 2021. Even after two years of FIR filed with the police, there has been no move to investigate whether the fire accident was due to a short-circuit or otherwise.

Rao suspected that some big hands were behind the fire accident and wanted an inquiry into it. He alleged that the minister had encroached government land under the RDS project.

Also, he said, earlier he had appealed to Tribal Welfare Minister Satyavathi Rathod to sanction roads for tribal hamlets in his constituency. But he was shocked to know that a GO was issued sanctioning a road of about 4 km. He wanted to know how many tribal hamlets exist along the sanctioned route. :Or it is meant for laying a road to farmhouse of the Agriculture minister.

Rao recalled the lightning speed with which action was initiated against Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender. He questioned the CM what action he would initiate against the minister. He also dared the minister to prove his allegations of land-grabbing wrong by taking an oath in Venkateswara temple.