Anantapur, April 15: The cancellation of the Odyssey Science City project in Anantapur district has come as a rude shock to the real estate developers who invested crores of rupees when the project was announced in 2006-07. They are now clueless about how to recover the money as some of them purchased the land for amounts as high as `1 crore per acre.
The state government yesterday issued orders scrapping the Odyssey Science City project at Anantapur after the promoters ‘Odyssey Science City Indian Private Limited’ opted out citing delay in land acquisition. The massive state-of-the-art integrated project was proposed to be established on about 65,000 acres with an investment of `1.1 lakh crore over a period of 10 years.
Soon after the project was announced, realtors from faraway places like Hyderabad, Krishna, Guntur and even Bangalore flocked the little-known villages in the mandals of Odicheruvu and Ammadiguda mandals of Anantapur district where the project was proposed. Though the market price of land was just `20,000-`30,000 per acre in 2007, the promoters of the company offered to pay a whopping `1.5-`2 lakh per acre.
But they could acquire only 9.16 acres from farmers and sought the help of the state government to acquire the remaining. Incidentally, the state government too offered to pay the farmers about `1.2-`1.5 lakh per acre.
Several other realtors also bought land in large quantities at about `4-`6 lakh per acre with some, including a couple of legislators, spending as much as `1 crore per acre to purchase land near Kokkanti junction which was rumoured to be the entrance for the Science City project.
“I bought five acres at the price of `4.5 lakh per acre near Kokkanti junction after selling off my agricultural land elsewhere. Now, I am unable to sell this land for even `1 lakh per acre,” said K Mallireddy, a farmer of Kokkanti village.
According to an estimate, a total of about 2,000 acres were bought by the realtors. The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) managed to acquire about 400 acres before some locals went to the court alleging that the APIIC had issued cheques without having adequate bank balance and had cheated them.
A few developers managed to sell away their properties after Public Interest Litigations were filed in the court but many investors lost their money. With the State government scrapping the project entirely, there is no hope for these realtors to retrieve their investments.
–Agencies