Telangana's Kakatiya varsity faces threat of encroachment

WARANGAL: Land grabbers have long been eyeing the sprawling acres of the Kakatiya University (KU) as their value sky-rockets with every passing day. In a recent case, the mafia seized the opportunity of the students’ absence and hatched a plan to grab one acre of the university’s land near Palevelpula under Survey No. 373. They reportedly cleared the area and are trying to begin construction work, all of this with the involvement of some leaders of the ruling TRS, sources said.

Activists of various student organisations, who learnt about this, rushed to the spot and protested. They, too, alleged that some TRS leaders were supporting the land mafia in encroaching upon the university’s prime land. According to sources, the land grabbers’ plan was exposed by the student organisations. They alerted the KU Development Officer, Prof Ramachandran, and the AKUT president, Mallikarjun Reddy, about this and urged them to take legal action. It is the duty of the Registrar and Development Officer (DO) to safeguard the university’s land.

A compound wall was built on one side of the university and the other side, which has about 40 acres, is already encroached upon. The university’s land under Survey No. 413 was given for the canal construction under the Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP), 13 acres for filtered and two acres to the KU police station. This leaves the university with 650 acres from the earlier 1,018 acres, the sources said.

Earlier, the students had demanded that a compound wall be built around the university to keep the land grabs at bay, but the officials ignored them, citing lack of funds. When Express contacted Prof Ramachandran, he admitted that an acre of land recently encroached upon belongs to the university and is part of its campus. He added that they have registered a case.