Polavaram Affected Families Seek Fair Compensation
The previous awards were not legally valid, they told the court.
The families demanded constitutional safeguards and other actions from the government for the welfare and socio-economic development of Scheduled Tribe Project Affected Families (PAF) linked to the Polavaram Irrigation Project.
Inhabitants of Talluru village, Talluri Veerabhdra Reddy, T. Satyanarayana Reddy, Venkata Reddy, K. Venkata Reddy and others (all are Konda Reddy families) filed a writ petition at the High Court on Friday explaining how they were cheated by government officials.
They alleged that they have been discriminated against in passing on the compensations. They requested the HC to pull up the officials for their unhelpful attitude towards the Scheduled Tribe Project Affected and Displaced Families of Talluru village, a hamlet of Kondamodalu Grama Panchyat. “Their actions are illegal, arbitrary, discriminatory, opposed to the Right to Fair compensation and transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act.
They said, “ The entitlements for the victims under the MoU dated 22, June, 2017 have not been provided to them. They have not been provided land for land in the command area on par with the similarly situated (ST) PDFs of Kondamodalu habitations. This is unconstitutional and a violation of Articles 14, 19, 21 and 300 A of the Constitution, the victims told the court.
They alleged that the special collector of land acquisition has not followed due process and he showed utter disregard to the salient features of the central Act 30 of 2013 vis-a-vis Land Acquisition. He hastily began the land acquisition process in Kondamodalu Panchayat villages.
A prescribed condition is that the land in the schedule area can only be acquired with the prior consent of the Grama Sabha, the petitioners noted.
“The LA Project Officer did not take any consent from the Grama Sabha. The authorities took advantage of the innocence of the tribal petitioners. The then project officer of ITDA Rampachodavaram, who acted as project administrator of Polavaram Project, promised to provide 426 acres of land to STs of 10 villages under Kondamodalu Panchayat excluding Talluru of Musurumilli Canals, before the high court in combined AP. Then, the writ petition was withdrawn by the petitioners. But, later, the project officer of land acquisition of the Polavaram Project failed to implement it, the court was told.
Even now, the victims are residing in painful circumstances, the petitioners said.