Despite unrest in Lagacherla, CM Revanth remains busy campaigning in Maharashtra

Kodangal’s Lagacherla and surrounding villages are witnessing unrest on an unprecented scale for the last six days, but completely oblivious to what is happening and not visiting the area even once, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is busy campaigning for the Congress in Maharashtra.

After the attack on Vikarabad Collector Prateek Jain and KADA Special Officer Venkat Reddy on November 12, about 25 persons, including farmers have been arrested in connection with the incident. Heavy police force was deployed in Lagacherla and other villages. Fearing arrests by the police, people are fleeing the village and taking shelter at their relatives and friends’ places. Measures are being intensified to nab the people involved in the incident. Amidst these actions, residents are complaining about police excesses and assaults.

Despite all the unrest in Lagacherla, Polepally, Dudyala and other places, the Chief Minister has been campaigning for his party in different constituencies in Maharashtra, including Chandrapur, Rajura, Vardha, Nagpur, Bhokar and others. In fact, the Lagacherla incident was waiting to happen, because this was the third time that the farmers made it clear that they would not part with land for the proposed pharma village.

On October 25, a programme was organized at Rotibanda thanda under Dudyala



mandal in Kodangal constituency by the district administration to seek villagers’ opinion on the establishment of pharma village. However, even before the programme could commence, villagers vociferously raised slogans against the Congress government and locked up Congress mandal president Shekar in the gram panchayat office. The siituation went out of control and police resorted to lathi charge and a few women suffered injuries in the incident.

The very next day, the Chief Minister visited Maddur and Regadimylaram in the constituency to console the family members of Congress leaders who were bereaved recently. Though he was in Kodangal for over two hours, he did not speak to villagers of Rotibanda, which was close to Regadimylaram. On August 28 too, tension had prevailed during a protest in front of the Dudyala MRO office after Turpu Rajamma, a woman farmer from Polepally village, held a pesticide bottle and threatened to take her life if her land was taken away by the government.

On the other hand, the Chief Minister’s brother A Tirupati Reddy, who met the Collector on Wednesday, asserted that irrespective of the farmers’ opposition, the pharma village and other industrial units would be set up in the constituency, making i clear that the opinion of the farmers or their losses were not priorities for the Congress government.