Bhubaneswar 26 Aug : Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi, sent a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday requesting stern punishment against individuals engaged in the alleged land fraud, weeks after charging that the state government had given non-Odias preferential treatment when purchasing land in and around the state capital.Sarangi claimed that more than 150 acres of land in the villages of Bhagabatipur and Giringaput on the outskirts of the city have been encroached and enclosed with barbed wires. He called the chief minister’s attention to the situation. The patch includes the properties of local temples, farmers, the government, and HAL workers.The fencing, according to Sarangi, was strategically placed to keep landowners from approaching the area and being pressured into selling their property to a Tamil Nadu woman.The most alarming fact, according to her, is that a current canal that supplies water to farmlands was purposefully broken in order to seize the land parcels. “The canal gave local farmers a chance at survival by taking water from the Deras reservoir. To prevent the farmers from cultivating their land and force them to sell off their land parcel, she claimed, the damage to the canal system was purposefully done.According to Sarangi, such land purchases by outsiders with no prior ties to Odisha, in and around the state capital as well as other areas of the state, seem highly suspect and call for a comprehensive inquiry. The national spokesperson for the BJP threatened that if the state government does not respond in a way that is satisfactory, the pent-up resentment and discontentment of the residents of the afflicted villages will take a new and challenging turn. Similar accusations were made by Sarangi last month.