THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even after large scale illegal activities were unearthed in public land and encroachment reported in assigned lands at Mookunnimala, the district administration is yet to take any action on the encroachers and illegal mining activities. The vigilance which had held a survey in the hill submitted a report that had brought out encroachments on public land and revealed large scale illegal mining activities. With the district administration taking no action, the Mookunnimala Samrakshana Samithi, which is spearheading the agitation against illegal activities in the hill, is gearing up to strengthen their agitation and also to demand the revenue minister to take strong action to take back all illegally held lands.
It has to be noted that the Collectorate had served notices in August to as many as 40 small scale encroachers as part of canceling their title deeds for encroaching on government land. However, no further action has been taken in this regard, samithi activists alleged. Apart from this, they also alleged that major players have been left out from the list of encroachers, even though they were mentioned in the vigilance survey report. A reason that has been attributed for not serving them notice is that these major players were functioning on leased land.
The samithi leaders said the Vigilance in its report has stated that fake orders were used to forge village and survey records to transfer government lands to individuals’ names.
Samithi leader Latha Preeth, who has given several cases in the High Court regarding Mookunnimala, said that they would approach the revenue minister and ask him to take action based on the report. “All the reports have come out against the illegal land holders and also quarry owners. Despite all this, the district administration has not been taking any action. It is now for the state government to take action. We will submit a memorandum to the revenue minister demanding to take back the illegally held land,” she said.
The Vigilance had completed the survey on November 23, 2016. The vigilance in its report came across illegal mining activities in more than 130 acres of land (103.73 acres of purambokke land, 30.53 acre of rock puromboke and 0.411 acre of road puromboke). The report also points out that 73.90 acres of Purambokke land, 8.57 acres of rock poramboke and 0.186 acres of road puramboke were illegally converted to private lands.
Apart from this, Latha Preeth said that illegal mining activities were done in assigned lands, which had been exclusively given for rubber cultivation. As per the Land Assignment Rules and Special Rules for Assignment of Government Lands for Rubber Cultivation Act, no other activity could be done in the land except rubber cultivation and the lands could not be transferable. When all these violations, have taken place, the revenue officials are not taking any action, she added.
District Collector K Vasuki said she will look into the matter.
The vigilance which held a survey in the hill submitted a report that had brought out encroachments on public land and revealed large scale illegal mining activities. The Collectorate had served notices in August to as many as 40 small scale encroachers. However, no further action has been taken