Just days before Holi, the colors of celebrations were replaced by clouds of dust at Vinoba Navodaya Colony in Velugumatla village in Telangana’s Khammam. Early on February 24, bulldozers arrived, 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 the lives they had built over decades.
“Darkness has fallen on our lives,” says B. Srinivas, 48, who works as a hamali (porter) at the Khammam agricultural market, his voice breaking as he surveys the pile of rubble that was once his home. A massive demolition drive on the ‘Bhoodan’ plots in Velugumatla, he says, has left families like his homeless.
Also read | UCCRI(ML) condemns the demolition of houses in Bhoodan plots in Khammam
Until recently, the small slum-like settlement, named after Gandhian leader Vinoba Bhave and inhabited by the working poor and daily wage labourers, was bustling with the routine of daily life. Today it stands derelict and an occasional scrap dealer rummages through the rubble looking for scraps of iron salvaged from the wreckage.
The colony is about six kilometers from Khammam town and is close to the nerve center of the district — the Integrated District Office Complex (New Collectorate) at Velugumatla, along the Khammam-Wyra highway.
“They (officials) came with dozens of earthmoving machines and tractor-trailers and were accompanied by throngs of police personnel,” recalls Srinivas, wiping away tears. “Before we could even understand what was happening, the bulldozers started demolishing our houses without warning.”
Srinivas is among the dozens of residents displaced by the demolition drive in Vinoba Navodaya Colony who are now staring at an uncertain future.
Sources said nearly 600 buildings, both kutcha and pucca houses, were destroyed and more than 1,800 people were left homeless during the day-long operation.
However, the story of these countries goes back several decades. Inspired by the bhoodan movement led by Vinoba Bhave in the 1950s, a local landowner named Kalavala Raja Rama Rao is said to have donated 62 acres and seven guntas of land in survey nos. 147, 148 and 149 at Velugumatla in 1953.
In April 2014, just before the creation of Telangana, the Andhra Pradesh Bhoodan Board issued 100-square-yard Bhoodan pattas to 1,895 poor beneficiaries in Velugumatla in erstwhile undivided AP “I built my house with my hard-earned savings and money obtained through gold loan A,” says the Argentine board issued by Pradewears of the Board. dated 23rd April, 2014 allotting him a plot in Bhoodan lands.
Years of hard work and careful saving, he says, disappeared within hours when the bulldozers arrived. “Where do we go now? How will I repay the gold loan and make my daughter’s matriculation wedding happen,” asks a distraught hamali, now staying at the government’s temporary shelter at Ambedkar Bhavan in Khammam.
Inside the packed halls of Ambedkar Bhavan, many other displaced families echo the same sense of uncertainty about the future.
Officials say the demolition drive was undertaken to clear unauthorized structures from Bhoodan lands. Soon after the operation, the district authorities announced that 31 acres and seven gunts of Bhoodan land, estimated to be worth more than ₹250 crore, had been “saved”.
The demolition caused an uproar in Khammam, long considered a traditional bastion of leftist parties. Grief-stricken members of displaced families staged protests condemning their eviction and demanding justice.
The matter escalated into a wider political controversy and drew strong reactions from several parties, including the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party. The controversy also sparked a war of words between the ruling Congress and the main opposition BRS, with both sides accusing each other of handling the “Bhood land issue”.
A scrap dealer rummaging through the rubble for scraps of iron salvaged from the wreckage. | Photo credit: NAGARA GOPAL
A section of Congress leaders alleged that an organization claiming to work for the rural poor had issued fake pattas to unsuspecting landless families. Local representatives of the concerned organization strongly rejected the accusation.
Business fees of the parties
Over the past few days, a steady stream of leaders from various political parties and mass organizations representing the weaker sections have visited Khammam to express solidarity with the displaced families.
Opposition leaders criticized the demolitions, describing the “bulldozing” of houses belonging to poor families as “reckless and insensitive”.
The CPI (Marxist) leaders claimed 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,” says CPI(M) district secretary Nunna Nageshwara Rao.
The demolition of Velugumatla drew criticism even from Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. In a statement, he said the Telangana government had “tarnished the legacy” of Vinob Bhave by demolishing houses built and owned by beneficiaries of the Voluntary Land Donation Campaign.
The issue has 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 the affected residents recounted the sudden demolition and loss of their homes.
Expressing grave concern over the plight of displaced families, many of whom belong to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Nayak assured them that justice would be served.
Kunamneni Sambasiva Rao, state secretary of the Communist Party of India and MLA from Kothagudom, questioned the veracity of the “reckless” operation. “Demolishing their homes arbitrarily without issuing a notice is inhumane,” he said while visiting the displaced families in Khammam, adding that the authorities should have conducted a house-to-house survey to identify any ineligible beneficiaries.
“The manner in which the poor were practically dragged out into the streets, causing panic among children, women and the elderly, is highly reprehensible,” he said.
Sambasiva Rao noted that Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy had earlier stated in the State Assembly that pattas would be issued to poor people living in Bhoodan areas across the state. According to him, the ministers from Khammam district should take the initiative and ensure justice for the displaced families.
Representatives of other parties also repeated the criticism. N. Ramchander Rao, BJP state president, visited Velugumatla and accused the ruling Congress government of carrying out a demolition spree targeting poor houses across the state, allegedly circumventing legal procedures for real estate interests.
Sharp criticism also came from KTRam Rao, BRS working president, who accused the Congress dispensation in Telangana of unleashing “anarchy” by destroying the roofs over the heads of the poor. He promised that his party would help displaced residents explore legal options to get justice.
Some of the displaced residents at a temporary shelter set up at Ambedkar Bhavan in Khammam. | Photo credit: NAGARA GOPAL
Khammam District Collector Anudeep Durishetty said the demolition drive was carried out on Bhoodan lands after due process of law. According to the district administration, the encroached Bhoodan land was taken back by the government in accordance with the orders of the Chief Land Commissioner and the High Court, thus protecting the valuable public land. “A joint investigation revealed fake documents and illegal plots in Bhoodan lands in Velugumatla. In this connection, criminal proceedings have been initiated against several individuals and further action is being taken as per law,” he said.
The minister’s word versus the residents’ concerns
Revenue and Housing Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy said that a detailed socio-economic survey is underway in Velugumatla, he said that all eligible families from among those who will lose their houses will be given house pattas and houses under the Indiramma housing scheme in their native places: “Actions will be taken to get them land pattas by March 15.
But for many displaced families in temporary shelters set up at Ambedkar Bhavan and TTDC in Khammam, such assurances did little to ease the uncertainty of the present. Some argue that the demolition drive was part of a larger design. “A few roving real estate agents with political clout have long conspired to drive us out of 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 area on the outskirts of the city.
The timing of the eviction, just before the trial season, also drew criticism from several quarters. “How could they pack our houses without thinking about the impact on our children who are preparing for the SSC exams,” asks Punem Kondal Rao, an Adivasi resident in his 40s. He works as a watchman in the city.
Some textbooks belonging to his elder daughter, a Class 10 student at Zilla Parishad High School in V. Venkatayapalem, were lost in the chaos, he says.
He has been living in the colony with his family of four since 2014. They initially stayed in a makeshift building before building a pucca house by pooling their savings and borrowing money from a self-help group.
It argues that nine houses in the colony have been spared demolition due to status quo injunctions. “The orders apply to the entire survey number. If that’s the case, the demolition drive itself was unwarranted,” he points out.
Another displaced resident says that some dwellings in Vinoba Colony have been assigned house numbers: “We lived here for several years, even before the inauguration of the New Collector in 2023.”
According to him, the sharp rise in land values around the new collectorate, which is located near the Khammam-Wyra highway, has attracted the attention of real estate agents to Bhoodan land in the area. “Some politically well-connected embedded elements are trying to usurp these countries,” he claims, requesting anonymity. It also demands that the government issue a white paper on the status of the entire Bhood land of over 60 acres in Velugumatla.
As the dust settles over the flattened colony, displaced families say they are preparing for a long-term struggle, backed by growing solidarity from political parties, activists and civil society groups. Their demand is clear: reconstruction of their houses in the same place and compensation for the houses that were demolished.
For many, the loss is not just property, but also years of hard work and fragile security built from meager earnings. Dhanamma, 55, a domestic servant, recalls watching helplessly as her house was demolished. “I built it brick by brick five years ago and used up all my life savings. It was flattened right before my eyes,” he sobs.
He adds that their expulsion from Bhoodan lands defeats the very purpose for which big landowners voluntarily donated land for the poor and needy as part of the historic Bhoodan movement. Now living with his family in a cramped temporary shelter, he says renting a house is simply beyond their means. But despite the uncertainty and hardship, she remains determined. “No matter what happens, we will not leave Velugumatla,” says Dhanamma firmly.
