The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Mani trying to alienate forest land, alleges Achuthanandan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 04, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Mani trying to alienate forest land, alleges Achuthanandan

Special Correspondent

`Chandy Government has no right to remain in power after the poll debacle'

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan has accused the Revenue Minister K.M. Mani of trying to alienate large tracts of forest land in the State to favour encroachers and big estate owners.

At a press conference here on Saturday, he said that efforts were on in the Revenue Department to strip the Cardamom Hill Reserve (CHR) in Idukki district of its legal status as `reserved forests' so that the State Government could regularise encroachments in the region and issue title deeds over the forest tracts left there. He said that the beneficiaries of this operation included several big estate owners, who held forest land on lease for cardamom cultivation.

Describing this as "slaughter tapping on the eve of being voted out of power," Mr. Achuthanandan said: "The Chandy Government should understand that, after the big defeats in the local elections and Lok Sabha byelection, it has no moral right to continue in office. If your intention is to extract as much as possible before leaving office, the people will not remain silent spectators."

He said a senior IAS officer at Mr. Mani's behest had "cooked up a new argument" that the CHR covered an area of only 15,720 acres (or 24.56 square miles) as per a notification published in 1897 by the erstwhile Travancore State. The boundaries of the `reserved forest' specified in the same notification encompassed an area of 334 square miles according to surveys conducted subsequently.

In the Travancore Forest Manuals of 1917 and 1947 also, the area of the CHR was given as 334 square miles. Mr. Achuthanandan said that even in the affidavits submitted by the Revenue Department to the High Court, the extent of the CHR was indicated as 334 square miles.

"For more than a century now, the extent of the CHR was considered as 334 square miles. This sudden attempt to slash the size of the `reserved' area to 24.56 square miles shows to what extent the Chandy Government is prepared to go to facilitate forest encroachment, thereby endangering the very existence of the State," he said.

He said the tragedy was that the argument to facilitate the alienation of 93 per cent of the CHR was prepared by an officer who claimed himself to be an ardent environmentalist and water conservationist. "He must first understand that there would be no water without the forests," Mr. Achuthanandan said.

He said the UDF had started off this term in the Government by allowing "Mr. Mani's people to encroach upon the Mathikettan Shola forests."

The Government was fully exposed in that operation and finally had to evict the encroachers and declare the area as a National Park. The attempt to help the land sharks to take over forests had been continuing on the sly all the time. The latest operation in the CHR showed that "they have become frantic since there is very little time left before being voted out of power," he said.

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