ONGOLE: The CPI (ML) New Democracy has demanded the Government to take a fresh look at the Land Reforms Act and retrieve the surplus land, assigned land, coastal land being enjoyed by landlords under binami names and distribute the same among landless poor in the State lest it should launch an agitation for occupation of such lands.

CPI (M-L) New Democracy district secretary Ch. Venkateswarlu in a press statement here on Saturday said that with the allegations and counter allegations being made over surplus lands and assigned lands in the last few days, it became clear that the Land Reforms Act was implemented more in breach. It is a crime either for the Chief Minister or opposition leader or anybody else to enjoy such lands.

Loopholes

He pointed out that the Andhra Pradesh Government had brought the Land Reforms Act into force from January 1, 1973. But several landlords exploited the loopholes in the Act to save their lands. They executed sale deeds on plane paper without any registration to claim that they had sold away their surplus lands.

The Supreme Court had declared such unregistered sale transactions as null and void in 1982. But the Government did not take the judgment seriously to retrieve the land.

Whenever poor people agitated for distribution of surplus lands, the governments contended that the distribution was already over and no surplus land was available for distribution.

While the Government estimated the surplus land to be 8.3 crore acres in 1956, the estimates dwindled to 4.3 crore acres by 1970, two crore acres by 1978, 42 lakh acres by 1984 and 30 lakh acres by 1991.

The Government distributed only 45.8 lakh acres among the poor till date.

Several landlords continue to hold in excess of the ceiling limit. Not satisfied, they set their sights on endowment land, assigned land etc.

The Congress-I Government now brought out an ordinance to facilitate retrieval of assigned land.

It proposes to amend the Act to take over assigned lands, which are not in the possession of original allottees, avoiding the need for their distribution among the poor again.

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