More and more skeletons are tumbling out of the cupboards of GITAM University, following the demolition of its compound wall and some other structures at its Rishikonda campus in Visakhapatnam on Saturday.
The Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation authorities took up the demolitions as part of recovering 40.51 acres of land allegedly encroached upon by the GITAM University management at Rishikonda and Yendada villages on the city outskirts.
The alleged encroachment of government land by GITAM University management is an open secret and everybody knows how its founder late M V V S Murthy, former MP, had used his proximity with previous Telugu Desam Party government led by N Chandrababu Naidu and occupied vast extents of lands.
After the Saturday’s demolitions, more such stories of land encroachment have surfaced in the media.
According to a media report quoting former chief secretary I Y R Krishna Rao, GITAM Murthy had made a desperate attempt to grab 34 acres of government land adjacent to the University.
In his Facebook post last year, IYR recalled the whole episode. During Kiran Kumar Reddy regime, Murthy had applied to the then government seeking allotment of 34 acres of land to university for expansion.
However, IYR who was then Chief Commissioner of Land Administration (CCLA) stonewalled his attempt. Despite pressures from the Kiran Kumar Reddy government and local politicians, he did not allot the land to GITAM University as it was against rules.
Instead, IYR allotted pieces of this land to Central government offices like Commissioner of Central Excise, Income Tax department, Commissioner of Customs etc and Social Welfare Department.
GITAM Murthy went to court seeking to stall these allotments saying he was the first person to write to the government for land. As the court granted stay, the central government departments did not take up any constructions.
In the meantime, TDP came to power in 2014, but did not take any action since IYR was still the CCLA and later became the chief secretary. Soon after IYR retired from service in 2017, Chandrababu Naidu mooted the proposal in the cabinet for land allotment to GITAM.
He strongly argued in favour of GITAM, but then minister Ganta Srinivas Rao said the allotments were made during the Kiran government and they cannot be transferred to GITAM.
Having no other way to allot these lands to GITAM, the Naidu government got the lands allotted to the Central government departments cancelled!
