Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Land acquisition: plea to resolve lease rent arrear issue

Coimbatore: Taking strong objection to the decision to acquire lands both on lease and outside the lease for the expansion of the Coimbatore Airport, the Singanallur lease landowners have appealed to the district administration and the Airport Authority of India (AAI) to resolve the issue of lease rent arrears before preparing the land schedule for acquisition.

They have also appealed to the authorities to exempt agricultural lands from acquisition.

In a memorandum to the authorities, the Singanallur area lease landowners led by Ravichandran Damodaran and Jagannathan said that the disputed lease lands in the following survey numbers SF No 7/1,8/1,24,25,23,33,28 had been identified for acquisition.

“The resistance from the AAI to even provide reasonable lease rent arrears was finally overcome with a lot of sacrifice from our side,” they said.

Even then the lease amount had not been paid since 2003.

The agreement reached between the landowners, the AAI and the district administration as per the minutes was that the land valuation would be fixed from 2003 until date for blocks of three years and a five per cent lease rental on the value as per the guidelines for such leasing would be paid.

Even in 2008 neither the district administration nor the AAI had taken any effort to settle the lease rent arrears to the landowners.

The landowners pointed out that the district administration was yet to give the land value particulars to enable the AAI to pay the lease rent arrears and it had not yet fixed a fair land value since the last 3 years.

The landowners had already informed the AAI to settle this lease up to date before initiating any acquisition proceedings.

Under these circumstances, the AAI was now preparing land plan schedule for not only acquiring these lands in 3 months but also to acquire the land belonging to the landowners which was not part of the lease.

“These agricultural lands have plantations such as coconut, supporta, guava, mango and vanilla.”

All along, there was talk of expansion of the runway and the infrastructure on Avanashi road side. With the pressure from the residents in Chinnampalayam village to shift the acquisition to the other side, the AAI and the district administration were targeting us, they added.

These lands were not in the vicinity of the runway or the terminal building and therefore our lands were being proposed only for utility purposes of the airport.

In view of this, the agricultural lands could be avoided from being acquired.

Before proceeding further, the authorities should inform the landowners about their plans since there was lack of transparency in the actions being initiated for land acquisition, they said.

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