Govt. land: Cops evict dwellers, remove tents

Warangal: Tension prevailed for some time at Jakkaloddi in Khila Warangal mandal in the district on Wednesday morning as the police arrested scores of people who set up tents on government lands, and shifted them to Madikonda police station.
Hundreds of homeless poor have been living in temporary sheds at the government lands for a few days under the aegis of Left parties as part of their agitation demanding the state government to allot them housing plots at Jakkaloddi.
The officials of the concerned departments and the local public representatives, along with some ministers, assured them to allot double bedroom houses and housing plots at some other places and tried to convince them to remove the temporary tents they set up, but the they did not listen to them and demanded to allot housing plots at the same place where they set up temporary tents.
On Tuesday late in the evening, officials of the police department beefed up security on the spot by deploying around 150 police personnel including assistant commissioners of police and circle inspectors of Mills Colony, Geesukonda and Channaraopet police stations, apart from fire staff and an ambulance at Jakkaloddi which led to panic-like situation the whole night in the area.
On Wednesday morning, officials of the revenue department including revenue divisional officer of Warangal Mahendar, Khila Warangal tahsildar Phani Kumar, Raiparthi tahsildar Satyanarayana and Sangem tahsildar Rajendranath accompanied by police officials started removing the temporary tents using JCBs and bulldozers.
When the people tried to prevent them from demolishing the tents, the officials arrested around 70 key members who were leading the agitation and shifted them to Madikonda police station.
However, the protesters stopped police vehicles at Naidu Pump Junction and prevented the police from arresting the people and Left party leaders. When the police managed to shift the arrested persons to the police station, around 500 members of women protesters reached Madikonda police station and staged a dharna in front of it demanding the police to release them.
They alleged that the state government was behaving harshly with the poor people. Instead of allotting housing plots to them, the government was forcibly vacating them from the place using police force, without even considering there were women and small children.