K Chandrasekhar Rao plans Delhi visit to pursue Telangana Land Bill

Hyderabad: The TS government is considering filing a review petition in the High Court on its orders on GO 123 relating to land acquisition for irrigation projects and has sought the opinion of the advocate-general in this regard.

The government has been holding a series of meetings with top officials over the issue, hoping to find a way out of the situation. The officials have told the government that the main objection raised by the petitioner was providing jobs to the families affected by the acquisition of land, a provision not mentioned in GO 123.

The officials said if the land would have been acquired for setting up an industry, it would have been possible to provide jobs to the affected families, but since the objective is construction of an irrigation project, it was not possible to do so.

The officials said that the government was considering filing a review petition on this ground. They said the TS government will take a final decision after the A-G gives his opinion on the issue.

Meanwhile, the TS government is keen to get the President’s approval for its Land Acquisition Bill at the earliest. Before introducing the Land Acquisition Bill in the Assembly, a high-level team comprising senior IAS officers had gone to New Delhi and discussed it with officials of Department of Land Resources.

After going through the draft Bill, DLR officials promised their total support.
For getting Presidential approval, the Bill has to go through many departments in the Central government. The state government has sent the Bill to the Union home ministry, which will send it to the DLR which in turn will forward it to the Law ministry.

After it is cleared by DLR and Law ministry, the Home ministry will decide whether the Bill should be sent directly to the President or be referred to the Union Cabinet for its approval.

Since this entire exercise would take a lot of time, officials have suggested to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to go to Delhi to personally pursue it with ministers and officials concerned to get it cleared at the earliest. Officials said that Mr Chandrasekhar Rao is likely to go to New Delhi very soon.