HYDERABAD: Siddipet district collector P Venkatrama Reddy on Thursday informed the Telangana high court that the government was ready to pay Rs 8 lakh per acre along with a 200 square yard plot for each of the four farmers whose land was taken away in Kondapaka’s Duddeda village. However, the farmers rejected the offer and sought Rs 70 lakh per acre as per the market rate.
The collector had earlier claimed that the administration took away six acres after the farmers had voluntarily resigned from their land. A bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy sought to know from the government if it had paid any compensation in lieu of the land taken away from the farmers. The bench had asked the collector to negotiate with farmers and pay them a better compensation.
It even asked him not to make distinction between ryotwari pattas and assignment pattas as the high court had already ruled in Mekala Pandu case that assignee farmers should be paid on a par with regular patta holders.
All the farmers in the current case were assignees who have been cultivating the land. The bench had earlier rejected the razinama theory proposed by the collector amid allegations by the farmers who said it was a fraud played out by the collector himself.
State counsel Harender Pershad said that since the farmers themselves had submitted razinama, the government need not pay any compensation. “But, we are ready to pay some amount to them,” he said. The bench sought a rejoinder from the counsel of the petitioners and posted the case to September 23.
Stating that the collector’s version was unacceptable to them, counsel for the farmers H Venugopal said the land of the farmers was not taken away from the petitioners for the purpose of constructing a collectorate complex. “It was given to Yapral Narasimha Reddy but the collector is saying that it was done to compensate him for the land he gave to the state to raise double bedroom houses elsewhere,” he said. The counsel expressed doubts in the claim since the farmers in the current case were not given any alternative land.
