Ranipet ryots stop highway boundary marking work

Speaking on the issue, Uliyanallur resident and Siruvalayam Primary Agricultural Cooperative Bank president D Ravichandran said, “no public hearing regarding payment of compensation was held for this work. Officials interacted with individual farmers and got them to sign papers resulting in only some getting compensation for their land surrendered for the project.” 

Agitated farmers stopped the contractor’s JCB from digging a demarcating pit line to mark the highway’s boundary. K Umapathy of Uliyanallur told DT Next, “all of us submitted petitions over the issue during the “Chief Minister in your constituency” campaign and there has been no action.” 

What irked farmers was that though different rates have to be paid for trees, farm wells and borewells, no such classification was done. “Compensation was fixed only for coconut trees and not for mango or teak,” said TN Vivasyigal Sangam Ranipet district vice president T Adhimoolam. Ravichandran said, “while the relief in some areas has been fixed at Rs 4,500 per cent, some had as high as Rs 16,000 per cent.”