Andhra Pradesh farmers against LPS for port

Vijayawada: The implementation of the Land Pooling Scheme (LPS) of the Machilipatnam Area  Development Authority (MADA) for construction of a deep water port and industrial corridor will become a challenge for the state government. There were 27 villages that were identified for pooling land from the owners, but several among them have already passed resolutions against the government's plans.

The land owners of Machilipatnam, where the Kapu caste is dominant, may seek film star Pawan Kalyan's intervention while the political parties who failed to oppose the LPS in Amaravati have plans to successfully stall the government's steps to send out a message regarding their presence on the scene.

The state government issued a notification two days ago for collecting land from farmers just as it was done under LPS at Amaravati, offering to pay an annual compensation of  Rs 50,000 and Rs 30,000 for wet and dry land respectively  along with developed land share in residential and commercial zones.  The government believes that the scheme will attract land owners who are dependent on farming, but some villages passed the  resolution against land pooling and would not allow the officials to enter.

Now the state government has announced a plan to use the LPS the way it did in Amaravati for the development of a deep water port and industrial corridor, but the locality conditions between the two areas are entirely different. A majority of the people in the villages in the vicinity of Amaravati capital city had accepted the LPS as there had been much hype created about it prior to the announcement of the selection of a capital.  

Nearly 15 to 20 villages in the Amaravati capital region location are not suitable for cultivation while land prices were also less  compared to other areas, like Nuzvid and Nagarjuna University,  which too were once proposed as likely locations for the capital city. It was amidst such uncertainty and by convincing the land owners that the government successfully collected their land from them.

But the situation is quite different in Machilipa-tnam where the port is envisaged. There is no real estate boom as the villagers have no idea about future developments. The government has not highlighted the benefits that will accrue to the town nor has it revealed any plans about the port so far as they are not in a position to purvey the image of the port too flamboyantly.

A majority of villagers prefer to continue with agriculture as their profession, their families being dependent on farming since generations. Apart from this, the leaders of  opposition parties, including YSRC, Congress and Left parties, failed to  stop the LPS for Amaravati capital city and get the mileage too due to a lack of the support they expected from locals. But now, with several villages having passed a resolution against the land pooling, political parties too plan to show their strength.

Former minister Vadde Sobhanadreswara Rao said that the government  only focused on land collection from the farming community and its plans should be opposed. No port in the country or world was constructed on so large an area: only the AP government had such plans.

Former MLA and YSRC leader Perni Nani said that the Congress  government made plans to construct the port only on government land. He  said that the government was looting the poor of their land.