Farmers divided over Uttar Pradesh government’s offer (Second Lead)

TAPPAL/AGRA/LUCKNOW - Farmers Tuesday appeared divided over the Uttar Pradesh government’s offer of enhanced compensation for acquiring their land for the 165-km Noida-Agra Yamuna Expressway.

Meanwhile, farmers in Agra too rose up in arms Tuesday, demanding parity with Greater Noida farmers. At least two officials - the Etmadpur sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) and the Etmadpur circle officer, and at least half a dozen personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary were injured when they were attacked by farmers.

Protesting farmers in Tappal village of Aligarh, who were stated to have signed truce with the government Monday midnight, still appeared reluctant on the issue of accepting the government offer of enhancing the compensation by an additional Rs.120 per sq metre.

“There is still a lot of difference between the compensation being offered here and that paid to owners of agricultural land in Greater Noida,” a farmers’ representative told reporters in the where violence Aug 14 left three people - two farmers and a police constable - dead. The farmers torched the Jattari and Bajna police posts.

“Nothing short of parity with the compensation rate paid in Greater Noida, would satisfy us. After all our village is barely 200 metres away from the boundary of Greater Noida where nearly double the rate was being paid to the farmers,” he contended.

The group flatly refused to go with Ram Babu Kathelia, who until Monday remained the undisputed leader of the joint action committee of local farmers and had been spearheading the movement for the past two weeks.

Kathelia, who had been kept under detention for two days, was in for a shock when his own comrades told him that they were not agreeable to the deal that was struck between him and Mayawati’s special envoy, State Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh.

Asked what course he would take under the circumstances, Kathelia told reporters in Tappal: “I am going to hold another meeting of our action committee Wednesday and we will then take the final call.”

In Lucknow, the division of farmers on the issue has become a cause of serious worry for the Mayawati government that was busy taking credit for resolving the crisis.

Holed up in closed door confabulations, none of the ministers concerned nor any senior bureaucrat in the chief minister’s office was available for comment.

As against the earlier offer of Rs.449 per sq metre, affected farmers were given a revised offer of Rs.570 per sq metre. Additional compensation was promised in case of value addition to the land such as crops, trees or irrigation facilities.

The chief minister had also decided to enhance the ex-gratia payment of Rs.5 lakh to each those killed in the violence to Rs.10 lakh and Rs.2 lakh to each of the injured.

The 165-km long Expressway , which is expected to reduce the driving time between New Delhi and Agra to just about 90 minutes, will pass through the Gautam Buddha Nagar, Aligarh, Mahamaya Nagar (Hathras) and Mathura, and involvs acquisition of land in 115 villages.

The state government constituted the Yamuna Expressway Authority in 2001 and the Jai Prakash group was awarded the contract for the project.

A total of 2,500 hectares is to be acquired for the development of the expressway - 500 hectares each in Noida, Aligarh and Agra and 1,000 hectares in Gautam Buddha Nagar.

The project was originally to be completed in May 2013 but the deadline was advanced to March 2011.