The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : IAS officer to probe temple land occupation: Minister

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 22, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

IAS officer to probe temple land occupation: Minister

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JULY 21. The Government will appoint a senior IAS officer to probe the alleged unauthorised enjoyment of land belonging to the Sri Vedagiri Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple in Nellore district by "an influential family with a lot of political connections," the Endowments Minister, M. Satyanarayana Rao, told the Assembly during question time today.

The Minister said that temples in illegal possession of "big people" would be taken away as a policy but those with the "poorest of the poor" would be sold to them at 75 per cent of the market value.

The member complained that an extent of 3.25 lakh acres was under illegal possession.

The Technical Education Minister, N. Narasimha Reddy, told Gade Venkata Reddy (Congress) and others that 30 per cent of the seats in minority engineering colleges would be filled by the EAMCET Convener, and out of the balance of 70 per cent, which was the management quota, 55 per cent would be filled by merit and 15 per cent by the management.

He said there were 234 engineering colleges in the State and about 3,500 seats remained unfilled last year, a figure disputed by Akbaruddin Owaisi (MIM), who contended that it was about 10,000 seats, which remained unclaimed every year. The member said the Government was increasing engineering colleges without considering the other requirements--trained staff and jobs to be created for the students later. The Minister, however, said the previous Government was to blame for this situation.

Bus stations on the anvil

The Minister for Transport, S. Santhosh Reddy, said that all mandal headquarters would be provided with bus stations. For now, 238 such stations were under execution. In all, there were 628 bus stations at the mandal headquarter level.

He said the RTC would construct the bus station with Rs 6 lakhs and Rs 10 lakhs under two different schemes, depending on the category of the place, if the site was shown.

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