PDFs protest over married girls denied Polavaram R&R

KAKINADA: Families displaced by construction of the Polavaram project are bitter over denial of relief and rehabilitation (R&R) package to their daughters as well as family members who had to leave their houses and look for jobs after being deprived of their livelihood following construction of the dam.

When the state government prepared a list of Project Displaced Families (PDFs) affected by the Polavaram project, it included in the list boys and girls of these families who had not reached the 18 years as on the cut-off date in 2017. However, the R&R package had not been provided within the period stated.

Since then, PDFs had to perform weddings of their daughters who had crossed 18 years of age. Likewise, the boys too who had aged had to go out looking for jobs or for higher education. “Now, officials are saying that such boys and girls are not going to be paid any compensation as they are not living in the project-affected villages,” Veerapuraju Chittibabu of Sivagiri village in Polavaram mandal of Eluru district pointed out.

Many families, particular the poorer lot, are in a piquant situation. When they had got their daughters married off, they had promised to give the groom’s family the compensation amount they would get from the R&R package. “As per Dharma, we have to make that payment. But officials are refusing to pay anything saying the girls are not staying in the same village,” Chittibabu underlined. He pointed to the obvious logic that a married girl would move to her in-laws’ place or be staying with her husband in another place.

G. Gandhi Babu of V.R. Puram in Yetapaka division belonging to Alluri Seetharama Raju district said many of the village people, including boys, who had grown up in villages like Koruthuru, Cheeduru and Sivagiri that had got marooned, had to leave for other places and stay in rented accommodations. He requested the government to do justice for such families by paying the R&R package immediately.

Further, some of the heads of PDFs had passed away before the compensation could be paid by the state government. “Members of their families must be paid the compensation due to them,” Gandhi Babu maintained.

Many families have urged Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and state government to look into such special cases and pay them their rightful compensation.