Minister Parthasarathi in land encroachment row

Vijayawada: If one tries to purchase land, one does all the homework and ensures if the lands are trust-worthy, legally valid and free of legal hassles. If there are any legal impediments, one never ventures to purchase the said land even if it has been mortgaged.

However, Secondary Education Minister K Parthasarathi did not take any such care and instead purchased an extent of land which was facing a legal suit in the court. He even purchased the land, that too from the party that had lost the case in the court.

He completed the formalities and registered the land in his son's name ' Nithin Krishna ' even as there was a revision petition in the court of the Second Additional Judicial Magistrate's Court. The incident has surprised one and all as to the motive of the Minister.

Even as a owner of the land was working in the field, the Minister sent his men to erect fencing around the land on Monday night.

The timing of the fencing also raised several questions on the real ownership of the land. Who does such a thing in the thick of the night secretly? The land is just 3 km from the fast-growing Ibrahimpatnam which lies along National Highway-9.

As per reports reaching here, four acres of land in Survey No. 79/1 are in the name of one Jasti Chalapathi Rao under the Jupudi village jurisdiction. Rao and his wife Seshagiramma have two sons Bhavani Shankar and Venkateswara Rao.

After Rao expired, his family sold away three acres. Pattaswamy Srinivasa Rao and his sister-in-law bought one-and-half-a-acres each from Rao's family. Rao's family sold the remaining acre to Roja and Aruna Kumari of Gudivada.

As this is so, one Satyavathi entered the scene, claiming that she was the second wife of Chalapathi Rao. She and her sons Saibabu and Srinivasa Rao produced documents, showing that they sold the four acres of Chalapathi Rao to a real estate trader Thallapalli Subbarao.

The purchasers of the land from Rao's family ' Srinivasa Rao and his sister-in-law Lakshmi ' filed a case in the court in 2005, alleging that the documents produced by Satyavathi were fake.

The court ruled the case in their favour and held the documents of Satyavathi as fake. The real estate agent who allegedly purchased land from Satyavathi filed a revision petition in the court and the proceedings are going on.

Against this complex background of the land, the Minister, too, entered the scene and announced that he purchased the land and registered it in his son's name. On Monday night, he sent a lorry full of his men to the land to lay fencing around it.

This has shocked Srinivasa Rao and Lakshmi who have been tilling the land for the last 20 years. They have alleged that the Minister and the real estate trader Subba Rao joined hands and created the illegal documents in their favour. They also alleged that Chalapathi Rao never married second time and disputed the claim of Satyavathi.

They pointed out that it was being shown that she was the second wife of Chalapathi Rao only after her demise and her sons created the fake documents and sold the land to the Minister.

Srinivasa Rao deplored that the Minister should send his money to the field during night to lay fencing. He said that he was scared to go to his field, following the entry of the Minister on the scene.

He also made it clear that it was he who had been paying all taxes on the land and repaying a loan on it to a cooperative bank. He also claimed that he was in possession of the pattadar passbook and that all the stated facts were recorded in the revenue books.

In Vijayawada, Krishna district president of Telugu Desam Party and Mylavaram legislator, Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, demanded that the State Government intervene in the case and protect the rights of legal owners.