The Hindu : Kerala News : Mahe park agitation completes 100 days

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 19, 2004

Kerala

Kerala - Others

Mahe park agitation completes 100 days

By Our Staff Reporter

MAHE, JULY 18. The ongoing agitation by a local action committee of environmentalists backed by freedom fighters here demanding the scrapping of the decision of the Mahe administration to lease the Tagore Park here to a private firm for development and maintenance completed 100 days today.

The agitation launched in the wake of the felling of 32 trees, mostly Casuarina trees, from the park late night on March 29 last by workers of the lessee continued as all efforts to find a settlement to the issue failed. Till today, 100 persons had participated in the relay fast organised by the Tagore Park Samrakshana Samithy demanding the withdrawal of the lease agreement. As part of intensifying the agitation, the Samithy called for observing a hartal here on July 20.

The Samithy president, T. Ashok Kumar, said the environmental activists and freedom fighters would stage protests in New Delhi in the first week of August to highlight the park issue and to demand that election be held to the Mahe municipality. No election was held to the municipal council for the past 36 years. The lease agreement was executed by the municipal commissioner on the basis of the Pondicherry Government's Gazette order in a discreet manner without inviting open tenders, he said.

As many as 55 members of the Samithy had gone on an eight-hour fast before the Pondicherry Assembly on June 8 last to demand to the Government to scrap the lease agreement. Last month, an effort had been initiated to break the deadlock. Talks between the CPI(M) deputy legislature party leader in the Kerala Assembly, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, and the Mahe MLA and Pondicherry Health Minister, E. Valsaraj, and the Palloor (in Mahe) MLA, A.V. Sreedharan, failed as the Minister's proposal to shorten the lease period was not acceptable to the Samithy which wanted nothing short of total cancellation of the agreement.

The lease agreement was for 15 years during which the lessee was permitted to develop public utilities as well as facilities for computer games, boating, restaurant and amusement for children in the park which were estimated to cost Rs.75 lakhs. The monthly lease amount of Rs.5,000 had to be paid to the municipality.

According to the Samithy, the lease agreement would ultimately lead to enforcement of restrictions to the entry into the lone park here. The historical importance of the park was also being emphasised by the agitators, especially the freedom fighters.

It was in this park that the then French Administrator, Deschamps, transferred powers to a governing committee headed by the late freedom fighter, I.K. Kumaran, on July 16, 1954 following a protracted struggle for freedom against the French rulers. The Martyrs' Column is located in the park.

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Mahe park agitation completes 100 days