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Aiming to defuse the controversy, which arose following newspaper reports accusing him of having 'grabbed' land meant for dalits, BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu has surrendered the 4.95 acres of land assigned to him in Nellore district in 1978.
A newspaper report from Hyderabad last week claimed that Naidu and his family were in possession of about 45 acres of land meant for distribution among SC and ST people.
The opposition Congress has pointed out that the land was allotted to Naidu, coming from an upper caste (Kamma) family, when he was a Member of the Legislative Assembly.
Nellore District Collector G Ananta Ramu, in a statement released on Thursday, said that Naidu had contacted him on August 17 and expressed his intention to relinquish the land in Kanumuru village.
Naidu subsequently sent a letter surrendering the assigned land and requested its distribution among eligible landless poor of the village, the official said.
The land has been taken over and will be assigned to eligible persons 'as per rules in vogue', Ramu said.
The Nellore district Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) had on Wednesday denied any land grabbing by the BJP president or his family members and stated that 4.95 acres of land was allotted to the former Union rural development minister in 1978 'as he was landless at that time'.
The RDO also determined that Naidu's father-in-law Alluru Masthaniah owns 8.56 acres of land, the collector said adding no government land was assigned either to Masthaniah or to the BJP president's brother-in-law Bhaskar Naidu.
The Congress had demanded a CBI probe into the entire affair.
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