Have you done door-to-door survey, High Court asks state

Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad has found fault with the manner in which the Andhra Pradesh state government officials are dealing with providing of Rehabilitation and Resettlement measures to the affected families in land acquisition in the state.

It questioned how the government can wash its hands off by stating that a public notice has been issued seeking affected families from landless agricultural labourers, artisans and others while the 2013 Land Acquisition Act mandates that the government should conduct a door-to-door survey to identify such affected families.

The division bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K Vijayalakshmi made these observations on Tuesday while hearing a PIL petition filed by V Venkataswarlu of AP Agricultural Workers Union (APAWU) seeking a direction to the government to provide R&R awards to affected families in various land acquisition proceedings.

The bench also directed the Advocate General of Andhra Pradesh Dammalapati Srinivasa Rao to make good his previous assurance of giving information to the court about how many R&R Awards have been passed in the 600 notifications issued for land acquisition in the state. 

The AG informed the bench that in certain cases only 47 acres of land was being acquired out of a total of 9000 acres in the village. Since there were no affected families in such cases, nil Awards have been passed. The bench pointed out that Section 22(1) of the 2013 Land Acquisition Act mandated that the authorities must conduct door-to-door survey to identify affected families.

It asked whether this was done, to which the AG replied that the government had published Notification and conducted tom-tom in the villages. Not satisfied with the reply, the bench directed him to furnish complete details and adjourned the case to April 30th.