Visakhapatnam: Tribals protested with gallow frames and ropes in Anakapalli's Ravikamatam mandal on Monday, saying their ancestral land had been illegally grabbed by a group of builders and even a sarpanch.
The demonstration was held during the revenue sadassulu (meeting) in Kavvagunta village, which was chaired by the local deputy tehsildar and village revenue officer (VRO).
The villagers expressed concern over the ploughing of their usurped land. They said protests will go on till the land records are rectified.
Tribals have been cultivating 11 acres and 62 cents of land under Kavvagunta revenue limits for decades now. However, errors were introduced in the Jagananna land re-survey.
Many land parcels were wrongly registered as government wastelands. After this, the local real-estate businesses led by Alladi Venkatasiva Rao, Alladi Venkata Lakshmi, Alladi Kusuma Lalitha, and Alladi Chandrasekhar registered 10 acres of land illegally.
Tribal representative Robba Varahalamma expressed grief that no result was achieved despite several written complaints to the revenue officials. Varahalamma challenged the newly-issued land titles and the unauthorised ploughing of Tribal lands.
One case of encroachment is of Dasari Suryakumari and Dasari Varahalu, who came to own 769 cents of land in this village after land titles were granted to Tribals in 1989.
Recently, the names of these two Tribals were removed and replaced with the names of the local sarpanch.
Similarly, new titles were created for 16 more people, and the names of 30 Tribals were deleted.
Following the new government's investigation, VRO Borapu Sattibabu was found to have committed irregularities and was suspended. Mandal revenue inspector T. Satish issued notices on these irregularities.
Despite a revenue sadassulu held two months ago to correct the mistakes in the Jagananna re-survey, the Tribals are yet to regain their rightful land possessions.
The Tribals questioned why no action was taken against these encroachers.
Determined to protect their rights, Varahalamma announced they would hold a large-scale protest at the mandal revenue office on January 20. Rabba Shankar Rao, supported by tribal social activist K. Govinda Rao, led the event on Monday.
