Delay in paying farmers irks Telangana High Court

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Friday told the state government it is not doing charity by paying compensation to farmers whose properties were acquired. “Nor are the farmers beggars to beg for their compensation,” the court said.

This was stated by a division bench comprising Chief Justice Satish Sharma and Justice A. Rajasheker Reddy, while dealing with a contempt case filed by people whose land was acquired 55 years ago.

“This is not an isolated case of delay in paying the land compensation. Hundreds of petitions and PILs were filed by farmers before the high court complaining either that they have not been paid the compensation or that the issues related to compensation remained unsolved. In some cases, those who lost land have not been paid any amount. You (government) are not doing charity by way of paying a compensation. Moreover, the farmers are not beggars,” Chief Justice Sharma observed.

He wondered why so many cases filed about land compensation were pending for long.

Justice Reddy observed that the petitioners would not get even an acre at current prices with the amount offered long ago by the government. “How can land be acquired without paying compensation,” he asked.

The bench also noted that farmers were committing suicide as they were not paid sufficient compensation for their land when it was acquired. “The government cannot touch the land without paying the compensation,” it pointed out.

In the present case, the petition was filed by Bakkuri Linganna and five others, whose land measuring three acres and three guntas was acquired in 1966 for the Sriram Sagar project. The award was passed in 1991 but this has not been implemented so far. The execution petition has been pending before the lower court since 2008.

Meanwhile, the HC suo motu took up a Public Interest Litigation based on a letter sent by the district judge, Mahbubnagar, as to how the office was overloaded by a large number of pending execution petitions filed on land acquisition suits. The HC had directed the state government in that case to pay compensation in all the execution petitions relating to land acquisition that were pending at all district courts within six months.

Even after this order, the compensation had not been paid to Bakkuri Linganna. With that, he and the others filed a contempt case before the high court in 2019. After two years, too, two undertakings given by government counsel that the compensation would be paid to petitioners were not honoured.

On an earlier occasion, a division bench headed by Justice Ramachandra Rao summoned the principal secretary of the finance department, Ramakrishna Rao, to explain the delay.

On Friday, he appeared before the high court. Special government pleader Harender Pershad told the court that the award amount calculated by the petitioners to the tune of Rs 52.7 lakh was not correct. It was valued at Rs 10 lakh and the amount had been deposited into their accounts recently, he said.

Petitioner’s counsel Gudi Madhusudhan Reddy objected to these contentions and drew the attention of the court to the fact that earlier undertakings were furnished by the land acquisition department, in which they agreed to pay the compensation along with three components of interest. The court adjourned the hearing to December 16.