E Arun & Tarun Kartick
Port Blair, Jun 12: Alleging double standard in Rahul Gandhi’s Land Acquisition Bill the Member of Parliament today said that the villagers, who lost their land in 2004 tsunami has been cheated.
Addressing a press conference at MP Office today, Mr. Bishnu Pada Ray, the Member of Parliament today said that according to the Bill introduced by Rahul Gandhi in Parliament recently the compensation for the land will be four times the market cost of the land but in Andaman and Nicobar Islands the compensation is given at a much lesser cost at 9.36 Lackhs/Hectare. He also added that according to the same bill every family has to be given one job or 5 lacks but that amount and job was also not given. Informing about the bill he added that according to the bill every family had to be given transport allowance at the rate of Rs. 1 Lack but that amount was also not given to the families in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
“Why there are different rules for Mainland people and Islanders? Why this double standard?” MP questioned.
Targeting the Congress Party and Lt. Governor directly the MP alleged that the Lt. Governor, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Congress Party have cheated the residents of the Islands and the farmers.
Mr. B.P Ray further speaking on the land compensation said that he will write a letter to the Prime Minister demanding that the land of the farmers who have received compensation should be given back to them and those farmers who have not received any compensation should be given compensation at Rs. 9.36 Lackhs/ Hectare for now, without taking their land. “If this is not done, we will gherao the Raj Niwas again,” the MP said.
Mr. B.P Ray further in the conference raised the matter of degrading quality of education in the Govt. Schools of these Islands. Stating the Name’s, Percentage Score and School of the top five topers of the Islands he mentioned that none of them are from any of the Govt. Schools and hence first time in the history of A & N Islands, the names of the toppers were not released by the Education Department in media.
He further informed the media about the declining over all pass percentages of different Govt. Schools of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and stated that just a few schools have shown improvement in the pass percentage nominally while the results of other schools have declined considerably.
Showing the results of several private schools, he mentioned that these schools are consistently performing well but the Govt. Schools are bringing poor results.
Regarding Transfer policy, the MP further informed that the Administration in the year 2010-2011 had received funds for providing school kits to the school going children from class I-VIII and it was decided by the Lt. Governor and other officials along with the MP that the school kits will not be disbursed directly but the money will be given to the children and they themselves will buy the kits but the Director of Education overruled all the direction and went ahead to publish Tender Notice.
He further said that he had received a letter from the staffs of the Fire Brigade stating that the staffs working in fire brigade from 1979 were getting one month extra payment and the administration had written a letter to the Home Ministry on this and after that the letter which was received from the home ministry in reply ordered to stop the one month pay immediately for reasons unknown. He said that he will approach the ministry for knowing the reasons.
