Left rejects Cong offer of Commission,to intensify land stir

Hyderabad, Aug 25 (UNI) Turning down the Congress Government's offer for constituting a land commission, headed by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, to deal with land-related issues, the Communist Party of India today maintained that the land stir would be intensified further and demanded setting up of an independent Land Commission.

The very survival of the ruling party would be threatened if it did not positively respond to the stir by the Left parties, as not only the Opposition parties like the TDP and BJP were taking up the issue now, but also Congressmen, including Kadapa Mayor P Ravindranath Reddy, CPI-led AIKS General Secretary Atul Kumar Anjaan and AIKS State President K Ramakrishna told reporters here.

Mr Anjaan, who took the sea route recently to lead an agitation by farmers protesting against allocation of their land to a salt manufacturing company by the state government in Prakasam district, claimed that there was no difference between the Congress Government in Andhra Pradesh and the Narendra Modi Government in Gujarat, which had used police force to suppress people's stir.

This was happening at a time when Congress President Sonia Gandhi went to South Africa to commemorate the ''Satyagraha'' launched by Mahatma Gandhi there, he added.

It was the Koneru Ranga Rao Committee, constituted by the Government, which had recommended the constitution of a land commission to resolve all land-related issues. If the Chief Minister, who would be preoccupied with several issues, headed the Commission, no justice was possible for the poor people, Mr Ramakrishna claimed.

Taking a cue from Kerala, the Rajasekhara Reddy Government should enact farmers debt relief act to rescue farmers in distress and curb continuing suicide of peasants.

Mr Anjaan, also a member of the National Commission on Farmers, asked the Andhra Pradesh Government to provide loans to farmers at zero per cent interest, taking lead from Kerala, where paddy growers were provided interest-free loans.

Stoutly opposing the auctioning of Government lands in the city, Mr Ramakrishna threatened to lead members of the Chankyapuri Cooperative Housing Society in occupying the land if it was handed over to any other person.

UNI