Andhra Pradesh - Guntur   

Villagers stage protest at Collectorate

– Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

On the warpath: Toddy tappers demonstrate against the proposed coastal corridor in Guntur on Thursday.

GUNTUR: ``The State Government wants to take your land at a throwaway price leaving you landless. The chemical pollutants released from the factories will enter the sea and cause death of fish leaving you jobless.” The words coming from Ramakrishna, member State CPI Polit Bburo, at a protest meet against the proposed coastal corridor are making 50-year-old Narsaraju from Allur village near Pittlavanipalem anxious. He holds about 10 acres of land in the village using it for cultivation of paddy in addition to aqua culture ponds and leasing out some land for growing other crops.

A few days ago, he had seen a notification in newspapers calling for objections to the land acquisition process in 13 villages in Repalle and Bapatla mandals.

“The Government will take our lands by paying a nominal amount and that meagre amount will not be sufficient even to buy a cent of land in these times of spiralling land prices,” he said. On Thursday, he was one among about 1,000 of them who came in lorries and staged a demonstration outside the collectorate.

His predicament is shared by scores of small farmers, toddy-tappers and others living in about 13 villages where the proposed coastal corridor would come up. “They say that many jobs will be available in the factories, but we are illiterate. We have been dependant on our professions for decades,” says Jonna Venkateswara Rao from Dindi village. He said that people had become restless ever since they had seen a newspaper notification worrying about the pains of displacement and trauma of being jobless.

The State Government on January 4 issued a G.O notifying setting up a coastal corridor between the sea ports of Nizampatnam and Vodarevu in Prakasam districts and awarded the contract to Rass Al Khaimah (RAK) Investment Authority of the United Arab Emirates and Matrix Export Private Ltd.

A body consisting of Communist Party of India and other left parties, trade unions and farmers belonging to those regions called `Coastal Teera Pranta Parirakshana Samithi’ has been formed to take up the cause of scores of displaced families with the State Government.

On Thursday members of the Samithi held demonstrations at all the costal districts headquarters.

In Guntur, TDP district president P. Pulla Rao, general secretary Ziauddin, and CPI secretary M. Nageswara Rao were present on the occasion. The leaders vowed that they would continue the agitation until the Government came down. They would lay siege to the Assembly on August 28, they added.

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