Expressway meets hurdles near Taj

Farmers in Agra demand Rs 1-1.25 crore per hectare of land given away for Taj Expressway.

With affected farmers filing their demands for compensation, the Taj Expressway project may face a hurdle in Agra. Their demand is Rs 1-1.25 crore per hectare of land acquired for the expressway in Agra.

The final date of filing objections for the residents of nine villages near Kuberpur, a satellite township of Agra, was Wednesday.

Submitting their objections, the farmers demanded postponing the land acquisition process till March 15 in order to harvest the potato crops.

These nine villages, falling in the fertile potato belt of the Agra region, are going to lose almost all their agricultural land to the expressway project.

According to Ramdas, additional district magistrate (land acquisition), the farmers had sought compensation at commercial rates, which were as high as Rs 1-1.25 crore per hectare, while the standard procedure for land acquisition was comparing land sale records of the past three years with the prevailing rates, which were quite lower than what the farmers were asking for.

The government was planning to use those rates as the basis while deciding the compensation quantum.

But the farmers, who had formed an organisation called 'Kisan Sangharsh Samiti', are unwilling to part with their agricultural land at such "low" prices, claiming that the farmland was the only means of livelihood for the residents of these villages.

Demanding that the government postpone the land acquisition process till the farmers reaped their crops, Rana Pratap Sikarwar, convener of the committee, said that at present the farmers were in their fields and were not in a mood to enter into any conflict with the government over the acquisition of their precious land but the potato harvest season will be over by March 15, and after that, a systematic opposition movement would be launched against the expressway project.

Meanwhile, the Agra Development Authority has cancelled its plans to develop a 500-acre residential enclave on the Taj Expressway and NH-2 junction just outside Agra, after the Expressway Authority objected to the acquisition claiming that the proposed land was already included in the expressway project and would be utilised in the development of commercial projects by Jaypee Associates in the future.