Gonds relocate entire village to their earlier mandal

The Raj Gond of Mallapur village, formerly in Indervelli mandal but placed in Sirikonda mandal when the latter was carved out in 2016, have taken it upon themselves to find a solution to their problem which cropped up due to identification of their habitation with Sirikonda.

Having unsuccessfully pleaded with the government to restore their affiliation back with Indervelli mandal, they have started relocating the village Mallapur to Gourapur which is within the limits of that mandal to circumvent the problem.

Mallapur, encompassing 86 households with a population of 485, will be shifting to the government land in survey number 26 of Gourapur village in the next couple of days. All its residents are peasants and have close commercial connections with Indervelli and the shifting suits their purpose as the mandal headquarters and the Divisional headquarters of Utnoor will once again be within reach being only about 12 km and 29 km away respectively.

Far from HQ

“Our alignment with Sirikonda needs us to travel over 20 km to the mandal headquarters, with a part of the journey through forest, over 70 km to the Sub Treasury Office at Boath and over 40 km to agriculture market at Ichoda and 35 km to Revenue Divisional Office at Adilabad town,” pointed out Madavi Bheem Rao, a former president of the local water users association. “While with Indervelli, we never faced any difficulty,” he added.

“We have met the present and past collectors of Adilabad district since the last two years. We even pursued our matter at the State Secretariat in Hyderabad,” said a visibly livid village headman or Patel, Durva Raju, as he recalled the failed attempts.

The villagers have started constructing their huts within the limits of Gourapur gram panchayat which is just 200 m away. “Sarpanch of Gourapur Madavi Sungu has asked us to give a list of names of villagers so that he can apply to Tahsildar for new house numbers for us and power connections,” revealed Pusam Anand Rao, a former sarpanch of Dharmasagar gram panchayat which included Mallapur.

Shell panchayat

In the recent reorganisation of gram panchayats, Mallapur has been made a gram panchayat and the voter list for the coming panchayat election has been displayed. All the villagers figure in the list but there may be no election to the gram panchayat.

“We will neither vote in the panchayat election nor in other elections in future as a mark of protest,” the Patel asserted. “If the government and public representatives fail to respond to our plea, what is the use of participating in the elections,” he asked.