The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Land distribution: 83,000 families identified

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Saturday, Jan 08, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Land distribution: 83,000 families identified

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, JAN. 7. The Government has identified 83,633 poor families for the ambitious one lakh acre land distribution programme to be launched on January 26.

The Minister for Municipal Administration, Koneru Ranga Rao, who is the chairman of committee on land, told reporters that 1,09,567 acres of Government and surplus lands had been identified for distribution. The committee, comprising officials and non-officials constituted by the Government, framed a series of guidelines to identify land and the beneficiaries.

Mr. Rao said that since 1969 the Government had distributed over 50 lakh acres of lands benefiting 34 lakh poor people. More than 42 lakh acres of Government land, 5.82 lakh acres of ceiling surplus land, 1.13 lakh acres of Bhoodan lands and 65,425 acres under the land purchase scheme had been alienated to the poor.

The committee would hold public hearing in Hyderabad and all district headquarters besides organising field visits for the members to gain first hand knowledge of the land-related issues.

Meetings to be held

Meetings would be conducted with officials of revenue, forest, tribal welfare, endowments, irrigation and command area development and social welfare. Task force teams, consisting of serving officials, who had experience and expertise in dealing with land matters, would be constituted. A cell would be opened in CCLA office to obtain Action Taken Report (ATR) on all the grievance petitions received by the committee.

Mr. Rao said an intensive drive would be launched to obtain status report in respect of the Government, assigned, ceiling and tribal lands in the scheduled areas. The Government would not hesitate to initiate criminal action against all those who had purchased the lands allotted to the poor, he added.

No interference

Later, leaders at an all-party meeting with the committee made it clear that political interference in the selection of the beneficiaries should be minimal. They suggested that all-party committees should be constituted in the villages to identify beneficiaries at gram sabhas.

The Hyderabad MP, Asaduddin Owaisi, the BJP leaders-- K. Laxman and Ramakrishna Reddy— the CPI assistant secretary, K. Narayana, the Janata Party MLA, K. Ramulu, the former Congress MLA, Kodanda Reddy, and others attended the meeting.

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