Pawan Kalyan caste cautious

GUNTUR: Increased casteism in the new capital of Amaravati is worrying, said actor and Jana Sena founder Pawan Kalyan at Penumaka on Tuesday.

He asked the Telugu Desam government to take action against casteism, which, he said would be disastrous to the peace and harmony of society. In the capital region, people are as it is divided into pro and anti LPS groups. According to reports, majority of the Kammas are pro-LPS while most Reddys, Naidus and other groups are anti-LPS.

There is also rising tension about the fact that though the government had first promised to provide LPS packages to assigned land farmers, it is now trying to get assigned lands without any package, claiming them to be government lands.

Assigned lands farmers are also feeling that the state government is denying LPS to suppressed communities for the benefit of a particular group.

The capital region is divided into three mandals, namely Tullur, Tadepalli and Mangal-agiri and comes under Tadikonda and Mangalagiri Assembly constituencies.

TD’s T. Sravan Kumar and YSR Congress’ A. Ramakrishna Reddy are representing Tadikonda and Mangalagiri constituencies. The villages in the Tullur Mandal are dominated by TD supporters while supporters of YSRC, Congress, Jana Sena and the Communist parties dominate in Mangalagiri and Tadepalli mandals.

Farmers like G.N. Reddy, M. Sambasiva Rao and others have alleged that earlier notification was issued for collection of lands from only 17 villages of Tullur Mandal for the new capital establishment but later the villages of Tadepalli and Mangalagiri were included. They alleged that the TD government’s proposed new capital in Tullur will benefit the owners of metta (dry) land farmers in Tullur mandal as each acre which used to cost Rs 80,000 to Rs 1.50 lakh has appreciated to Rs 80 lakh to Rs 1.50 crore.

They said that the price of their lands had gone up from Rs 4 crore to Rs 12 crore per acre in the last five years but the government had intentionally included their villages in the capital region, which led to price erosion.

They suspect the government wants to suppress non-Kammas in the Tadepalli and Mangalagiri mandals.