Babu hides Collector’s report from panel

• Krishna district has 1.25 lakh acres of land
• Forest land is more than revenue, endowments land
• District report did not go beyond Hyd

Vijayawada: The detailed report prepared by the Krishna district administration on the availability of land did not reach the Sivaramakrishnan Committee, which studied the feasibility of locating new capital for the residual Andhra Pradesh.

The non-availability of the report on land was also mentioned in the Sivaramakrishnan report to suggest against locating the new capital between Vijayawada and Guntur. The committee could notice only the fertile agriculture land available with the farmers and was unaware of the land owned by the revenue, forest and the endowments departments.

Krishna District Collector M Raghunandana Rao held a meeting with the officials of various government departments in the city on June 19, 2014 and directed them to collect the data of the available land. The officials, too, have done their job and submitted a detailed report to the Collector within a week, which was forwarded to the State government. However, the report did not go beyond Hyderabad and was not made available to the Sivaramakrishnan Committee. Though the intention of the State government officials not to supply the report to the Sivaramakrishnan Committee is not known, the committee, too, had identified the non-availability of the report on lands.

Meanwhile, the sources in the revenue department revealed that Krishna district has more than 50,000 acres of forest land spread over Nandigama, Mylavaram, Tiruvur, Nuzvid and Gannavaram Assembly segments. The major share of this land is located in the Nuzvid Assembly segment, particularly distributed in Musunuru, Bapulapadu and Agiripalli mandals.

The endowment land, too, is available around 15,000 acres in Agiripalli and Nuzvid mandals, particulars of which are also available with the district administration.

The Nallamala forest gets faded slowly from Amaravathi area of Guntur district and it continues through Nandigama, Mylavaram, Tiruvur, Nuzvid and Gannavaram before getting connected to the Manyam forest of the Godavari district at Chintalapudi of West Godavari and Sathupalli of Khammam district. This sector has the forest land available in a few hundreds of acres but the major share is available in Bapulapadu and Musunuru mandals.

The officials have also noticed more than 14,000 acres in Nunna, Pathapadu and Adavinekkalam villages on Vijayawada-Nuzvid road. The same report was submitted to the State government, which is now available with Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. The sources said that the Chief Minister had directed the district officials to conduct a survey of these lands and keep them ready for take over after due de-notification by the Central government as promised in the bifurcation bill.

Interestingly, the district officials have listed some of these lands suitable for establishment of Central government institutions including IIT, IIM, NID and NIT. It is to be seen whether the government would allocate this land to the Central institutions or go for establishing Assembly, Secretariat and Chief Minister's Office (CMO), as suggested by the Sivaramakrishnan Committee.