TAMBARAM : Tamil Nadu Vivasaayigal Sangam and Communist Party of India (Marxist) activists staged a demonstration at the Tambaram Taluk office on Thursday urging the State Government to allot three cents land to landless families in Chennai Metropolitan Area, and pattas to families living in village for generations, but not issued any land documents so far.

Speakers who addressed the gathering charged the Dravidian parties with doing very little to address the problems of landless poor despite being in power for the past four decades. They said they were upset with the Chief Minister's remarks in the Assembly on issuance of pattas to people living on government lands.

The TN Vivasaayigal Sangam is the State unit of All India Kisan Sangh.

Reminding the government not to compare the land reforms carried out in West Bengal with the distribution of land here in Tamil Nadu, the speakers said the urgent need was distribution of fertile land to rural poor so that they cultivate crops and three cents of land to families near Chennai so that they could build their own houses.

Citing instances of educational institutions and private industrial houses grabbing thousands of acres of forest land and water bodies with governments remaining mute spectators, the speakers wondered why parties in power were unmoved by the plight of landless poor.

E. Ponmudi, State secretary of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions, pointed out that the Land Ceiling Act passed in 1961 had been a complete failure in Tamil Nadu. Since it was passed, only about 1.8 lakh acres of excess land was distributed, only a fraction of the 72 lakh acres they had identified as land meant for distribution to the landless poor.

The protestors collected more than 3,500 applications from people seeking pattas and handed them over to officials of the Revenue Department.

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