Farmers protest de-notification of land for airport

Farmers from the Gokul village in Hubli are up in arms against the state government for denotifying the land acquired from them for expansion of the Hubli airport.

The farmers are miffed over the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board allegedly handing over the land acquired from them for the expansion of the airport to a non-government organisation. The farmers also prevented the drilling of a borewell on the land.

Later, they held a meeting at the village temple to chalk out their future course of action. Leaders of a prominent farmers' outfit, who were present, alleged that the BJP government had cheated the farmers by selling their acquired land. They said, if there was excess land, it should be returned to farmers. They decided to approach the deputy commissioner to seek justice.

Meanwhile, BJP state unit president Prahlad Joshi expressed shock at the issue. He said: "It was wrong to hand over the land acquired for the airport's expansion to another organisation. If the KIADB had excess land, they should have brought it to the notice of the department concerned," he said.

DC Sameer Shukla said it was not clear which land had been allotted to the NGO Deshpande Foundation. He clarified that the district administration had acquired it for expansion of the airport. However, he was not aware of the KIADB allotting the land to any private organisation.

Asked if it was legal to sell the land acquired for a purpose, Shukla said, there were guidelines to be followed and he would comment only after getting details.

When the office-bearers of the NGO were here on Thursday for the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a training facility on the 6.9-acre land, the farmers had an altercation with them. They staged a protest saying that their land had allegedly been "sold" to an NGO by the KIADB. They questioned the government decision to "sell" the land acquired for the airport expansion to a private organisation at the rate of Rs 26 lakh an acre.

They alleged that the land required for airport expansion was 599 acres, but the KIADB had acquired 711 acres. The excess land had been de-notified in favour of former chief minister Jagadish Shettar's relatives, alleged the farmers. However, former CM Shettar refuted the charges and said that none of his relatives had any government land allotted to him.