MANCHERIAL: Sarath, a farmer’s son from the nondescript village of Nandulapalli in Nennela mandal, Mancherial district got the surprise of his life on Wednesday — he got a phone call from none other than Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
Sarath’s family is happy now not because Rao called up them, but their land dispute has been resolved. To make things better, they got Rythu Bandhu cheques too.
So what really happened and what made the Chief Minister of Telangana call Sarath?
Agricultural land belonging to Kondapalli Sankaraiah’s father was transferred to his relative by local revenue officials who tampered the records. Sankaraiah tried hard to solve the problem but he gave up after a while. Sarath, who couldn’t bear to see his father’s struggle, wrote about the problem on the Chief Minister’s Facebook page, explaining his family’s agony.
The Chief Minister responded to the post and called Sarath twice. Rao took the information from Sarath in the first call.
Later, in the evening, Rao again called up Sarath and informed him that he had directed the district collector to take action. District Collector Bharathi Hollikeri immediately suspended two officials — VRO Karunakar and Revenue Inspector Peddiraju — for tampering the records.
During the fateful call, Sarath explained to Rao that his family had inherited seven acres of land from his grandfather. However, the land was surprisingly transferred to a relative, Kondapalli Sankaramma, who were now residing in Hyderabad. This relative was also getting Rythu Bandhu cheques, he had said.
Rao said that there were several farmers in the State like this. “I have wanted to rectify land records for a long time. I wanted to launch the Dharani website in June. But Revenue officials threatened to go on strike. Even in municipalities, even petty works cannot be done without greasing the palms of officials,” Rao told Sarath.
Rao also spoke of how some ‘irresponsible fellows’ had replied to Sarath’s post, saying the ‘CM was waste’ and other insipid things. He called such people ‘barking dogs’ for posting negative comments, and added that he could not realistically attend to individual cases.
“The system should change and function on its own. The Dharani website was intended to make this possible. Some even called me Boku (useless fellow) for trying to change things”, Rao lamented.