The Gordian knot of Munnar

KOTTAYAM: Munnar is a Gordian knot, tough even for the seasoned politician or the dedicated bureaucrat to untie. The levers are played by factors which do not exactly favour one other: history, law, greed, merchandise, politics, uprightness, livelihood issues, humaneness and business, to name a few. And the result is that all attempts to differentiate between encroachers and settlers in place that was once the mascot of Kerala’s tourism industry has proved futile. The high-level meeting called by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the Munnar issue on Monday may have ended the latest round of agitation but a permanent solution — by granting title to the people who have been residing there for generations—is far from over.   

A major portion of the land on which the migrant labour from Tamil Nadu reside in Munnar falls under two categories: those owned by the Kerala state Electricity Board (KSEB), and the revenue and forest land which was resumed to the state government from the KDHP company. The two kinds of lands which come under the KDH village, the Munnar town and the surrounding areas, range up to thousands of acres. The special KDH Act 1971 provides for a long a process for the transferring the land resumed by the government from the KDHP company to people. “This compelled many settlers to fabricate title deeds,” said a government official. “The law does not provide for issuing title deeds for these lands. The current strikes by the political parties have begun when the officials concerned questioned the allotment of the title deeds.”

The land acquired by the (KSEB) for the Pallivasal project also has legal hurdles. According to the law, the (KSEB) land cannot be assigned to the settlers even though they may have resided at the place for many years. “Most settlers in Munnar cannot claim a right over the land though they may have resided at the place for many years because of the law,” Devikulam sub-collector Sreeram Venkataraman told DC. “The legal hurdles are acting as a stumbling block that it is difficult even for the government to assign the land to the people.”    According to the norms, only revenue land can be assigned to the parties concerned with the consent of the government and mere possession of the land does not make a sufficient ground for assigning it in their name. And the sad fact is that, while the government, political parties and the officials try and solve the issues of the migrant labour, encroachment of the government land and construction of multi-storey buildings by people with questionable antecedents go on uninhibited.