Fact Sheet: Now, Cong takes up 'Bhoo Akramana!'

Wisdom seems to have dawned upon the Congress party at last. They have realised how much damage the Bhooparatam of the Leftists has done to the Congress party and eroded its electoral base.

Though the party has not come out with any action plan to undo the damage and counter the Opposition strategies, Congress leaders at the district level have been chalking out their plans to regain their hold among the poor. In Adilabad for instance, the Congress leaders launched their own Bhoo Akramana, encouraging the poor people to occupy government lands, as they don't want to give any credit to the left parties. Hundreds of poor from slum areas of Adilabad town and nearby villages occupied government lands on the outskirts of the town; erected signboards in the lands they have occupied reads that these lands allocated by the local Congress MLA C Ramachandra Reddy. The MLA assured the people that the government would regularise all such encroachments in the near future. Surprisingly, the local police or district administration did not intervene in this issue unlike in the past when poor led by left parties occupied government lands.

Though it might give a temporarly mileage to the Congress in the districts, it would create a lot of problems for the Y S Rajasekhar Reddy government, as it has only justified the Lefists' action. Whether he will regularise all such encroached lands is a million dollars question.