Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Pipeline road survey completed

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Officials of the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) and the Revenue Department on Monday formally completed the ‘pipeline road survey’ in areas coming under the Sasthamangalam village.

As part of this, KWA workers, once again, dug up a property near Kowdiar Junction to convince Revenue officials led by the Tahsildar that a 33-inch cast iron pipeline passed beneath the property. The Authority is locked in a legal tussle with one K.G. Abraham over an adjacent plot of land. Recently, KWA officials had dug trenches on this plot to identify the pipeline beneath. In return, they were slapped with a case, including one for alleged robbery in which a senior engineer is the prime accused.

In what they see as crucial evidence to lend credence to their argument, the KWA officials have in their possession a copy of the Travancore Gazette of 1929 in which it is stated that 61-odd cents of land in survey number 184/2 and 41-odd cents of land in survey number 185/1 have been acquired for laying the pipeline. Further, the ‘Puramboke Register’ reportedly notes that the Authority has 92 cents of land in Sasthamangalam village.

It is the contention of KWA officials that a lot of manipulation has been done in Revenue records to enable various people to purchase land that was originally Authority property. “A commonly adopted method is to change the sub-division number in records. A plot that should have been recorded as, say, 184/1 would be recorded as 184/10. As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult to trace the original plot of land,” a KWA engineer associated with the survey said. The KWA is also reportedly in possession of the copy of a sale deed executed by the last king of Travancore Chithira Tirunal Balarama Varma, in which the path of the pipeline has been clearly marked. “One thing is clear. Land was acquired by the government of Travancore for laying the pipeline.

“The path of the pipeline is known. Nobody would have acquired land in one place and laid the line in another place,” the engineer reasoned. The Revenue officials are expected to prepare a report on their survey, shortly.

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