Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has once again rakes up uproar over the proposed Mallanna Sagar project, by dubbing large scale protests aroused against this move was staged by some `outsiders’. Presently, the land acquisition for this project was halted due to stay order from the High Court.
Accusing the Opposition parties of provoking the farmers against Mallanna Sagar and other projects, the Chief Minister said that about 75% locals were ready to give their land for the Mallanna Sagar project and the government had promised better compensation for the project oustees than the compensation laid down in Land Acquisition Act 2013.
Farmers were misled by Congress and other parties despite the TRS Government offering fair compensation, he lamented. He said that the government also promised to give double bedroom houses to the project oustees besides compensating them thrice the land registration value and compensation for land acquisition. No other government had offered such a fair compensation like TRS did, the Chief Minister reiterated.
It may be regard that over 30,000 people from 14 villages in Siddipet district, have protested for over three months opposing government’s move for acquisition of their fertile lands for this project. Incidentally, most of these villages are part of Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao’s constituency. He is the nephew of the Chief Minister. He is still hesitating to enter some of these villages.
They fears eight of these villages will become history once the Mallanna Sagar irrigation project becomes a reality. Estimated to cost Rs 9,800 crore, the Mallanna Sagar dam will store 51 thousand million cubic feet of water and proposes to irrigate 12 lakh acres in the state’s drought-prone Medak, Nalgonda and Nizamabad districts. About 20,079 acres of land will be submerged for this project.
However, several irrigation experts argues this project is not viable. When many opposed accusing that the government is moving ahead without preparing a Detailed Project Report (DPR), Chief Minister argued in the Assembly that the government is having DPR, but not making it public for strategically reasons, as that would may makes neighbouring states to approach courts with litigation.
