Congress Vows To Take Land Bill Fight To Delhi

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President N Uttam Kumar Reddy strongly condemned the manner in which the Telangana Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement bill (Telangana Amendment Act, 2016) was passed in the special session of the State Legislative Assembly on Sunday.

Speaking to mediapersons at Assembly Media Point, Reddy criticised the haste with which the amendments were adopted and the entire proceedings of special session were completed in less than 10 minutes.

He said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao did not even come to the House to facilitate debate on such an important issue.

Condemning the TRS government for not accepting the Congress party's demand that the amendments to the bill should be preceded by a debate on the farmers' issues, he lamented that the Congress members were not even allowed to speak on the subject.

He announced that the Congress party would take the fight to Delhi, meeting President of India Pranab Mukherjee within a week requesting him to reject the bill.

Reddy said that the amended Bill was detrimental to the interests of the farmers in the State, and would hurt lakhs of them. He alleged that the amendments were carried out in a haste only to benefit some contractors who were awarded huge contracts through non-competitive and manipulative tenders.

"Chilli, turmeric and other farmers are in distress at not getting remunerative prices. We demanded a Market Intervention Fund of Rs. 1,000 crores to help those farmers. But the Chief Minister tried to politicize the entire issue. He simply dismissed the protests by farmers and even did not regret the registering of cases against them. KCR must apologize for this. Else, the farmers will teach him a befitting lesson soon," he said.

Describing the TRS government and KCR as "anti-farmer", Reddy said that the state government's wrong policies had resulted in more than 3,000 farmers' suicides during the last three years. Instead of taking corrective steps, he said that the TRS government was still pursuing the same "anti-farmer" agenda while suppressing the voice of the opposition parties.