Venkaiah Naidu returns land to state

For Bharatiya janata Party (BJP) president M. Venkaiah Naidu, August will be a month to remember.

He went from landlord to landless, after returning 4.95 acres of land back to the state government, but only to check the flood of protests by the Congress party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which were threatening his political career.

On Thursday, Naidu arrived from New Delhi to the tightest security cordon yet for him and sped away in a car with the federal minister Bandaru Dattatreya.

The police had to arrest over 20 Congress party supporters and the Youth Congress state president a few hundred metres from the Begumpet airport.

A statement from District Collector Anantaramu claimed the BJP president wrote to him to take back back the 4.95 acre D-Form certification and give the land to "landless" poor in his village.

Though the official said Naidu wrote on August 17 exactly a day after the land scam was exposed, it was apparent Naidu made up his mind on Wednesday night only.

This was made more than obvious by the vociferous defence put up by BJP state politicians throughout.

The Congress party came down heavily on Naidu on Thursday saying it was "unethical" to grab 4.95 acres in 1978 when he was the legislator for Udayagiri in Nellore district drawing an annual salary of Rs24,000 and at a time when he already owned another 3.28 acres.

"Soon after the exposure, Naidu himself admitted to getting government land but claimed he was "landless" and virtually ignorant of all that was happening around him.

On Tuesday night, a local government official also issued a statement saying that the land was "assigned" to him but made no mention of the August 17 letter.

Neither the official or Venkaiah Naidu made any reference to the 42 acres of government land in the Kasumuru village which was given to his father-in-law, brother-in-law and family relatives or what would become of it.

Meanwhile, the Congress party yesterday threatened to launch a state-wide agitation if the state government did not prosecute Naidu on the "land grab" charge.

Congress party general secretary P. Sudhakar Reddy said it was surprised at Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu's silence over "an episode that attracted the country's attention."

In Visakhapatnam, Venkaiah spoke on the scam for the first time saying "political parties should not try to interfere in other party's affairs or that of its leaders."