CM will soon take a call on Podu Lands: Minister Indrakaran Reddy

Hyderabad: Forest Minister A Indrakaran Reddy on Tuesday said Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao would soon take a decision on 'Podu lands' and till then the forest officials would not bother the tribals living in the agency areas.

The Podu lands issue came for discussion during the Question Hour in the Assembly on Tuesday when Congress member D Anasuya said that the tribals were agitating over the Podu lands. Replying to this the Minister refused that the tribals were agitating.

He said that the State government was implementing the Forest Rights Act enacted by the Centre for tribals. He said so far 94,774 individuals claims and 721 community claims were received and 89,956 individual claims were found ineligible by the tribal welfare departments.

The Minister said that all the District Collectors were instructed by the tribal welfare department to take up joint survey exercise by forest, revenue and tribal welfare departments to identify non-tribal claims and to check whether any of these non-tribal claimants were in physical possession of forest land.

Instructions were also issued to process ineligible claims for rejection through speaking orders by the district level committees after joint inquiry.

Several MLAs from the tribal areas also wanted to raise their issue but the Speaker P Srinivas Reddy refused to allow them to speak as per the practice of allowing only single supplementary question after one hour in the Question Hour.

The Minister said that since the Chief Minister assured to solve the issue, the forest officers have been asked not to take any action till then.