Kerala - Alappuzha   

Restore land to farmers, says Congress

ALAPPUZHA: The controversy over 154 acres of surplus land in the R-Block of Kuttanad that was sold by the Kuttamangalam Service Cooperative Bank is still raging.

Even after the government conducted inquiries into the sale and dismissed the ruling committee of the bank for the illegal deal, the Congress, which launched an agitation against the deal on October 19, says the issue does not end there.

The agitation, District Congress Committee president A.A. Shukoor said here on Thursday, would continue till the land was reclaimed from resort groups and other private parties and handed back to the farmers from whom the land was taken over by the cooperative bank.

The second phase of the agitation would be launched on December 29 by senior Congress leader V.M. Sudheeran with a protest march from the Mancombu Assistant Registrar office to the Kuttanad Taluk Office, Mr. Shukoor said.

The government, he alleged, was trying to wash its hands off the issue by putting the entire blame on the bank. The ruling committee was merely dismissed when there should have been prosecution procedures initiated against the culprits.

The fact that the farmers were still suffering was also being ignored. The government’s stance on the issue should have been different, particularly because it was Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan who had led a popular struggle in the 70s to help the farmers get the land.

Alleging that the government was trying to shield the actual culprits in the deal, Mr. Shukoor said the farmers who lost the land in the illegal deal were desperate and were on the verge of committing suicide due to financial troubles. If the government continued its “indifferent attitude”, it would not be long before R-Block turned into “Kerala’s Nandigram”, he said.

The land, according to the Congress, was assigned as surplus land to 217 landless agricultural workers in Kuttanad after being restored through the struggle led by Mr. Achuthanandan. However, with farmers unable to repay loans, the cooperative bank auctioned off the land illegally.

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