Land Pooling for AP Capital: Chandrababu to meet farmers today

LAND POOLING

• Govt likely to announce more sops
• Majority of farmers expected to fall in line

Guntur: To give a fillip to the State government’s land pooling mission, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will be meeting representatives of fertile land farmers in Hyderabad on Thursday. The Chief Minister is expected to announce some more incentives to convince the farmers who were not willing to part with their lands for the capital cause.

This was confirmed by Minister for Municipal Administration P Narayana, who told The Hans India that the meeting of farmers with the Chief Minister would bring land pooling to its logical conclusion. After the February 26 meeting and announcement of more sops, the government expected a majority of the farmers to fall in line so that it would become easy to invoke the Land Acquisition Act on the rest of the farmers.

The Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) and the Guntur district administration also sent a report to the State government on the demands of the fertile land farmers as well as small farmers’ demands who had unconditionally surrendered their lands.

The sops to be announced would be for fertile land farmers, dry land farmers and tenant farmers. For the fertile land farmers, the government was likely to increase yearly compensation to Rs 1 lakh from the Rs 50,000 per acre per year, which was announced earlier. Similarly, jasmine farmers were likely to get Rs 50,000 per acre. There were several jasmine farmers in Tadepalli, Mangalagiri and Thullur mandals.

There were nearly 10,000 farmers possessing less than one acre each. Each of them, along with other small farmers having one acre of land or more each, would be entitled to get monthly pension of Rs 2,500 pension. However, the government was in two minds on extending pension to farmers having less than one acre as it would be a further burden on the exchequer. It was in favour of increase in yearly compensation. But the farmers preferred monthly pension of Rs 2,500, which would keep their life going.

Meanwhile, fertile land farmers were demanding the government to make loan waiver applicable to horticulture farmers in the capital city region. Loan up to Rs 1.5 lakh should be waived at one go, they said. The government did not cover horticulture farmers under the scheme but only announced that a loan waiver of Rs 10,000 would be extended to horticulture farmers. The government was also unlikely to concede the farmers’ demand of increasing commercial space from 300 to 600 sq. yards to all farmers as part of the package announced earlier. February 28 was the deadline set by the government for the land pooling exercise. The only hurdle then would be the petition in the High Court filed by farmers against land acquisition.