Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Chandy seeks probe into sale of land

Thiruvananthapuram: Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy has demanded an investigation into the sale of 156 acres (one acre = 0.4 hectare) of kayal fields in R Block of Kuttanad by cooperative society no. 1673 of Kuttamangalam. The land was assigned to agricultural workers of Alappuzha district as surplus.

In a letter to Revenue Minister K.P. Rajendran on Monday, he demanded the restoration of land to the workers.

He said the land was assigned to 217 landless workers as part of a struggle for surplus land in 1970. The cooperative bank had taken a loan from NABARD with the help of the title deeds of the 217 people as part of a kayal reclamation scheme. It had collected the signatures of these workers without explaining things to them. The loan was taken three years after that. They were told that the loan could be repaid by cultivating coconut, paddy, tapioca and vegetables and that a school and milk and fish societies would be set up. But none of the workers benefited from the loan. They were not allowed to enter the land after that.

The land had been sold to enable a private individual to implement an eco-tourism scheme. The sale deed was registered in the Pulinkunnu Sub-registrar’s Office in August 2006. The representatives of the society themselves said the sale amount was Rs. 60 lakh. There were many irregularities in the deal.

He charged the cooperative society with having managed the deal by hiding the fact that its loan had been written off. The land value in R Block was Rs. 10 lakh to Rs. 15 lakh an acre.

In this case, 156 acres had been sold for a mere Rs. 60 lakh. Those who had lost their land said that it was fraud. The deal which left the poor agricultural workers penurious could not be approved, he added.

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