JOIN USAmaravati: Farmers challenge govt to prove inundation
“It was only in 2009 and then in 2019 that I have seen Krishna river in spate. The villages earmarked for the capital city never got flooded. If Botsa Satyanarayana could prove that my village is prone to inundation, I will gift him the 3.5 acres my mother gave me as a present when I got married,” Battula Ganga Bhavani says.
She is one of the many farmers who pooled their lands for what was promised to be one of the best capitals in the world.
Ganga Bhavani says that she has pooled ten acres of land for the capital. “Where was this minister Botsa Satyanarayana when the so-called Sivaramakrishnan committee said that Amaravati is prone to inundation. Is he sleeping? Why he never educated us on that report? Now he says that the region is low-lying,” she said.
She added that her family members were having sleepless nights after the minister declared that the Amaravati region is not suitable for capital and stopped all the construction work.
Different Amaravati
“Is the minister not ashamed of spreading lies? He shows the floodwater surrounding the massive Buddha statue in Amaravati village to prove his point. But the Amaravati village is 24 km away from capital Amaravati,” said Kambhampati Sirisha from Rayapudi village, one among the many villages that constitute the 33,000-acre Amaravati city.
Another farmer, Kanteti Venkateswarlu, an SC by caste, wondered what will happen to the Rs 9,000 crore said to have been spent on construction of roads, infrastructure, secretariat, high court, and the residential complexes, if the government decides to shift the capital.
Lakshmikantham of Mandadam village, who is receiving the government’s monthly compensation in lieu of the land pooled, wanted to know what will happen to the compensation if the capital shifts to some other place.
Real estate
Many farmers that DH spoke to say that the local ruling party MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy is keen on shifting the remaining part of the capital to Mangalagiri which was not a part of the Amaravati city envisioned by former CM Nara Chandrababu Naidu.
The government has branded the present location as an area dominated by “Kamma” caste and wants to spur real estate development in Mangalagiri and in Donakonda area of Prakasam district where the Reddy community own vast tracts of land.