Farmers not willing to part with lands

Guntur: Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Sitharam Yechuri here on Friday said the farmers in Guntur district were not willing to part with their lands for capital city. He wondered whether Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu felt that there were not intellectuals to advise him on building capital city and that was why he had gone to Singapore to secure help from experts there.

At a media conference, Sitharam Yechuri said he had visited some of the villages where the government intended to acquire land for capital city. Most of the farmers were not willing to part with their lands. Unless 80 per cent of the farmers agreed to surrender their lands, the government cannot acquire lands under the new Land Acquisition Act, he said.

He criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for trying to divert attention of people from his failures. Instead of fulfilling promises made by him, he was resorting to sloganeering, he said. Later, participating as the chief guest at the 21st district party meeting, Sitharam Yechuri said six left parties would jointly participate in an agitation against the Modi government to protest against price rise and cutting down on non-plan and thus affected welfare schemes.

He said that although the people had rejected the Communist parties in the recent election, they had not fully supported the BJP either as the party secured only 31 per cent of the total votes polled, while 69 per cent went non- BJP parties. The Communist parties, he said, would undergo introspection on why people had rejected them. He said communalism was subtly rearing its ugly head in Modi dispensation. He said that his party had contributed its might in formulating MNREG scheme during the UPA-1 regime.