Congress Vows To Get Telangana's GO 123 Repealed

After the Hyderabad High Court's stay order on its judgment to quash the GO 123 (which stipulates the compensation and the rehabilitation for people whose land is acquired for irrigation projects in Telangana) on August 9, the main Opposition party in the State, the Congress, promised that it would continue its fight against the GO till it was repealed.

Senior Congress leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Damodar Rajanarasimha said that the government had implemented the GO only to grab lands from the farmers as soon as possible with minimal compensation to and responsibility towards the farmers.

He clarified that his party was never against any of the irrigation projects to begin with, but was only opposed to the massive amounts of money that was being budgeted by the State government to redesign the projects, the impending submergence of the villages upstream and the resulting loss of livelihoods for farmers, and the attitude of the government towards dissent and its ignoring expert opinions on the need for the reservoir.