Just days before Holi, the colours of celebration were replaced by clouds of dust at Vinoba Navodaya Colony of Velugumatla village in Telangana’s Khammam. Early on February 24, bulldozers rolled in, turning rows of modest homes into piles of brick, tin and splintered wood even as hundreds of families were left staring at the ruins of lives they had built over decades.
“Darkness has fallen on our lives,” says B.Srinivas, 48, who works as a hamali (porter) at the agriculture market yard in Khammam, his voice breaking as he surveys the mound of debris that was once his home. The massive demolition drive on ‘Bhoodan’ lands at Velugumatla, he says, has left families like his homeless.
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Until recently, the small slum-like settlement, named after Gandhian leader Vinoba Bhave and inhabited by the working poor and daily wage labourers, bustled with the routines of daily life. Today, it stands deserted, with the occasional scrap dealer rummaging through the wreckage for bits of iron salvaged from the rubble.
The colony lies about six kilometres from Khammam city and sits close to the district’s nerve centre — the Integrated District Offices Complex (New Collectorate) at Velugumatla, along the Khammam-Wyra highway.
“They (the officials) came with dozens of earthmovers and tractor-trolleys, and were accompanied by hordes of police personnel,” recalls Srinivas, wiping tears. “Before we could even understand what was happening, the bulldozers started bringing our houses down without notice.”
Srinivas is among scores of residents displaced by the demolition drive at Vinoba Navodaya Colony, who are now staring at an uncertain future.
Sources say nearly 600 structures, both kutcha and pucca houses, were razed during the day-long operation, rendering more than 1,800 people homeless.
The story of these lands, however, stretches back several decades. Inspired by the Bhoodan movement led by Vinoba Bhave in the 1950s, a local landowner named Kalavala Raja Rama Rao reportedly donated 62 acres and seven guntas of land in Survey numbers 147, 148 and 149 at Velugumatla in 1953.
In April 2014, just before the formation of Telangana, the Andhra Pradesh Bhoodan Board issued pattas of 100 square yards each to 1,895 poor beneficiaries at Velugumatla in erstwhile undivided A.P. “I built my house with hard-earned savings and money taken through a gold loan,” says Srinivas, holding up a worn copy of the proceedings issued by the Andhra Pradesh Bhoodan Board dated April 23, 2014, which allotted him a plot on the Bhoodan lands.
Years of back-breaking labour and careful savings, he says, vanished in a matter of hours when the bulldozers arrived. “Where should we go now? How will I repay the gold loan and perform the wedding of my daughter who is pursuing post-graduation,” asks the distraught hamali, now staying at a government-run temporary shelter at Ambedkar Bhavan in Khammam.
Inside the crowded halls of Ambedkar Bhavan, many other displaced families echo the same sense of uncertainty about the future.
Officials maintain that the demolition drive was undertaken to clear unauthorised constructions from the Bhoodan lands. Soon after the operation, district authorities announced that 31 acres and seven guntas of Bhoodan land, estimated to be worth over ₹250 crore, were ‘saved’.
The demolition triggered a furore in Khammam, long regarded as a traditional stronghold of Left parties. Aggrieved members of the displaced families staged protests condemning their eviction and demanding justice.
The issue snowballed into a wider political controversy, drawing sharp reactions from several parties including the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Bharatiya Janata Party and Aam Aadmi Party. The controversy also sparked a war of words between the ruling Congress and the main Opposition BRS, with both sides blaming each other over the handling of the ‘Bhoodan land issue’.
A scrap dealer rummaging through the wreckage for bits of iron salvaged from the rubble.
| Photo Credit:
NAGARA GOPAL
A section of Congress leaders alleged that an organisation claiming to work for the rural poor had issued fake pattas to unsuspecting landless families. The charge was strongly denied by local leaders of the organisation concerned.
Parties trade charges
Over the past few days, a steady stream of leaders from various political parties and mass organisations representing weaker sections have visited Khammam to express solidarity with the displaced families.
Opposition leaders criticised the demolition drive, describing the “bulldozing” of houses belonging to poor families as “ruthless and insensitive”.
Leaders of the CPI(Marxist) alleged that the action violated the very spirit of the Bhoodan movement. “Bhoodan lands are meant for the landless and homeless poor. Demolishing houses built by the downtrodden, against all odds, defeats the very spirit of the Bhoodan movement,” rues CPI(M) district secretary Nunna Nageshwara Rao.
The Velugumatla demolition drew criticism even from Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. In a statement, he said the Telangana government had “besmirched the legacy” of Vinoba Bhave by demolishing the houses constructed and owned by beneficiaries of the voluntary land donation campaign.
The issue also caught the attention of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. Its member Jatothu Hussain Nayak visited the displaced families of Vinobhanagar in Khammam on March 1 where aggrieved residents recounted the sudden demolition and loss of their homes.
Expressing serious concern over the plight of the displaced families, many of whom belong to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Nayak assured them that justice would be done.
Kunamneni Sambasiva Rao, State secretary of the Communist Party of India and MLA from Kothagudem, questioned the veracity of the “ruthless” operation. “Demolishing their homes arbitrarily without issuing notices is inhuman,” he had said while visiting the displaced families in Khammam, adding that the authorities should have conducted a house-to-house survey to identify ineligible beneficiaries, if any.
“The way the poor were virtually dragged onto the streets, creating panic among children, women and elderly persons, is most reprehensible,” he had stated.
Sambasiva Rao noted that Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy had earlier stated in the State Assembly that pattas would be issued to poor people residing on Bhoodan lands across the State. Ministers from Khammam district, he said, should take the initiative to ensure justice for the displaced families.
The criticism was echoed by leaders of other parties. N. Ramchander Rao, State president of the BJP, visited Velugumatla and accused the ruling Congress government of carrying out a spree of demolitions targeting houses of the poor across the State while allegedly circumventing legal procedures for real estate interests.
Sharp criticism also came from K.T.Rama Rao, working president of the BRS, who accused the Congress dispensation in Telangana of unleashing “anarchy” by destroying roofs over the heads of the poor. He promised that his party would help the displaced residents explore legal options to get justice.
Some of the displaced residents at the temporary shelter set up at Ambedkar Bhavan in Khammam.
| Photo Credit:
NAGARA GOPAL
Khammam District Collector Anudeep Durishetty has said that the demolition drive was conducted on Bhoodan lands following due process of law. According to the district administration, encroached Bhoodan land was taken back by the government in accordance with orders of the Chief Commissioner of Land Administration and the High Court, thereby protecting valuable public land. “A joint inquiry revealed fake documents and illegal allotments in Bhoodan lands at Velugumatla. Criminal cases have been booked against several individuals in this connection and further action is under way as per law,” he said.
Minister’s word vs residents’ fears
Stating that a detailed socio-economic survey is under way in Velugumatla, Minister for Revenue and Housing Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy said all eligible families among those who lost their houses would be provided house-site pattas and houses under the Indiramma housing scheme in their native places: “Measures will be taken to ensure house-site pattas to them by March 15.”
But for many displaced families at the temporary shelters set up at Ambedkar Bhavan and the TTDC in Khammam, such assurances have done little to ease the uncertainty of the present. Some allege that the demolition drive was part of a larger design. “A few errant realtors with political clout have long been conspiring to drive us away from Vinoba Colony to expand their real estate business in Velugumatla,” claims a displaced resident, referring to the area’s rapid growth as a well-connected residential zone on the city outskirts.
The timing of the eviction, just ahead of the examination season, has also drawn criticism from several quarters. “How could they bulldoze our houses without thinking about the impact on our children who are preparing for the SSC exams,” asks Punem Kondal Rao, an Adivasi resident aged around 40. He works as a watchman in the town.
Some of the schoolbooks belonging to his elder daughter, a Class 10 student at the Zilla Parishad High School in V. Venkatayapalem, got lost in the chaos, he says.
He has been living in the colony with his four-member family since 2014. Initially, they stayed in a makeshift structure before constructing a pucca house by pooling their savings and borrowing money from a self-help group.
He argues that nine houses in the colony were spared from demolition following status quo orders from a court. “The orders apply to the entire survey number. If that is the case, the demolition drive itself was unwarranted,” he points out.
Another displaced resident says house numbers had even been allotted to some dwellings in Vinoba Colony: “We had been living here for several years, even before the inauguration of the New Collectorate in 2023.”
According to him, the sharp rise in land values around the new Collectorate, located close to the Khammam-Wyra highway, had drawn the attention of realtors to the Bhoodan lands in the area. “Some politically well-connected vested elements are trying to usurp these lands,” he alleges, requesting anonymity. He also demands that the government release a white paper on the status of the entire Bhoodan land parcel, measuring over 60 acres, in Velugumatla.
As the dust settles over the flattened colony, the displaced families say they are preparing for a prolonged struggle, one backed by growing solidarity from political parties, activists and civil society groups. Their demand is clear: reconstruction of their houses at the same site and compensation for homes that were demolished.
For many, the loss is not merely of property but of years of toil and fragile security built from meagre earnings. Dhanamma, 55, a housemaid, recalls watching helplessly as her home was torn down. “I had built it brick by brick five years ago, using up my entire lifetime savings. It was razed right in front of my eyes,” she sobs.
Driving them away from the Bhoodan lands, she adds, defeats the very purpose for which large landowners had voluntarily donated land for the poor and needy under the historic Bhoodan movement. Living now in a cramped temporary shelter with her family, she says renting a house is simply beyond their means. But despite the uncertainty and hardship, she remains resolute. “Come what may, we will not leave Velugumatla,” Dhanamma says firmly.
