The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : She espoused a cause through the ballot

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She espoused a cause through the ballot

Special Correspondent

Mary Francis

KOCHI: She got only 3,164 votes in the Ernakulam Lok Sabha election, but Mary Francis Moolampally is happy about the outcome.

Her candidature, she says, has achieved its primary goal of spotlighting the Moolampilly eviction and bringing the need for rehabilitation of the evictees even before their homes are formally acquired by the authorities for locating development projects.

Her candidature, sponsored by the Moolampilly Coordination Committee, which has been campaigning for the rights of 326 families evicted over a year ago for building a road to the Vallarpadom container terminal, caught national headlines. It also boosted, she believes, such struggles across the country.

In fact, Ms. Francis told The Hindu, she and her colleagues had only expected to secure around 1,500 votes, but 3,164 votes were a surprise.

‘Sympathy for cause’

“It showed that so many people were sympathetic to our cause,” she said. In hindsight, however, she believes that she would have secured a much higher number of votes but for the strong anti-LDF wave. Not that the number of votes mattered much.

What mattered was the issue—the critical human rights issue of people who have been driven out of their homes and homesteads to find room for development projects.

“We are not against development and we are certainly not against the Vallarpadom project,” Ms. Francis says emphatically. “What we ask for is rehabilitation and compensation for our homes and land that have been acquired for the project.”

Ms. Francis, 60, a housewife, had contested only one election before—as a ward member in her Kadamakkudy panchayat.

Francis Kalathunkal, convenor of the Moolampilly Coordination Committee, said Ms. Francis’s candidature could project on to the public mind the sad plight of the evicted people anywhere in India.

It could also disprove the authorities’ claim that the Moolampilly rehabilitation issue had been solved.

He alleged that the February 2 pattayam mela (distribution of title deeds) opened by the Chief Minister was a sham.

An independent jurists’ committee led by former High Court judges Mr. Sukumaran and Mr. Shamsudheen that investigated the Moolampilly issue, found that the evictees, who once had their own homes, were now out on the street, Mr. Kalathinkal said.

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