The announcement of the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech on giving exemption from capital gain tax has created initial euphoria among farmers of Amaravati capital region. But a day after the announcement, farmers who surrendered their lands for construction of capital Amaravati under land-pooling system, started examining the real benefits of it.

Now they are suspecting that this provision was intended to benefit corporate mafia, more than themselves. According to the guidelines, the landowners can get benefit of tax exemption only if they sell their land in the next two years’ period from the date of announcement.

This provision is clearly establishing that the provision was intended to encourage the farmers to give up their lands to corporate houses facilitating them to set up their own corporate houses. In fact, they have been making efforts for the last two years to purchase those lands offering them attractive prices.

However, a majority of the landowners prefer to hold their lands instead of selling them. Once the development takes place, including setting up of education institutions, administrative capital city and construction of roads, they are expecting that the lands would get a huge demand on par with Vijayawada city and prime locations in Hyderabad.

In this backdrop, they landowners are now requesting the Centre and the State governments to enhance capital gains tax exemption benefit period for 10 years. Now the land prices are an average of Rs 1 crore to Rs 2 crore per acre based on the location in the Amravati capital region. A few landowners have already sold their lands tempted by current price.

Now they are constructing new houses and invested part of the proceeds in lands in some other locations in Krishna, Guntur and West Godavari districts. After meeting some immediate financial needs and procuring basic comforts, they now they want to preserve their lands expecting huge prices in future.

Meanwhile, landowners felicitated Guntur MP Galla Jayadev yesterday at Tulluru in Amaravati capital region for his efforts in getting the tax benefit. But they requested him to again put in efforts for extending the time limit for next 10 years instead of present two years.