Case registered against BRS Rajya Sabha member

Hyderabad: The Mirpet police have registered a case against Divakonda Damodar Rao, founder and managing director of Namaste Telangana newspaper and a BRS Rajya Sabha member, for allegedly publishing misleading reports that harmed the interests of farmers in Nadergul village.

According to the complaint, on the basis of which the police registered an FIR, the paper allegedly contained false reports that the farmers had entered into agreements with private companies / influential persons for joint development of the land.

The land was originally allotted to the landless poor back in 1968, and the previous BRS regime made some attempts to take the land from the claimants, which failed.

The petitioner alleged that ‘Namaste Telangana’ contained copies of agreements allegedly entered into by farmers and private developers. “These are all fake documents,” claimed the complainant.

Explaining the case, Meerpet Inspector Keesera Nagaraju said, “On November 1, we received a complaint from farmer T. Balakrishna of Nadergul village, who alleged that in 1968, the government had allotted land to Dalits and landless persons and their parents in the village. Survey No. 92 in Nadergulu”.

Balakrishna stated that they and their families have been cultivating the land since then. Then, during the previous government, HMDA officials had asked the beneficiaries to hand over the land for development, promising to return the land after the process.

The beneficiaries demanded 700 square yards of built-up land per acre, which HMDA officials did not agree to, Balakrishna said in his complaint. So, families continued to cultivate the land.

On September 31 this year, a report was published in the Namaste Telangana newspaper that influential people had started pooling land and that the beneficiaries had agreed to hand over government land to private developers in exchange for 1,000 square yards of developed land and ` 10 lakh per acre, said police.

The report also included allegedly fake deals, said complainant Balakrishna Dekan Chronicle. According to Balakrishna, many farmers in survey #92, Nadergul, are poor and have been affected by false claims in the article.