KOZHIKODE: Tensions are steadily escalating across the high-range agricultural belt of Kozhikode district as the CPM Thiruvambady Area Committee announced a massive day-and-night public protest to oppose the proposed Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) draft notification.
The demonstration, scheduled to commence on September 28 at 4PM and conclude on September 29 at 9AM near the Thiruvambady Bus Stand premises, aims to press the authorities for the complete exclusion of human habitations and cultivated farmlands from the purview of final environmental restrictions.
CPM Thiruvambady Area Secretary V K Vinod voiced deep apprehension over the severe distress felt by the high-altitude farming community. He strongly condemned the Central Government for promoting anti-people measures and accused the Kerala State Government of displaying apathy through its persistent silence.
Vinod pointed out that while other affected state administrations took active measures to safeguard their residents, the state government’s passive stance risks allowing the current draft notification to become permanent law. Such an outcome, he warned, would destabilize the lives, property rights, and economic livelihoods of thousands of local families who reside along the Western Ghats region. Puduppady, Nellipoyil, Kodencherry and Thiruvambady villages in Thiruvambady Legislative Assembly Constituency are included in the ESA draft notification.
Furthermore, the CPM leadership strongly criticized the State Agriculture Department’s upcoming State-wide Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Conclave scheduled in Thiruvambady on Tuesday in association with the Forest Department.
Terming the event highly ill-timed and hollow, Vinod questioned the sincerity of assembling the Chief Minister and cabinet ministers for discussions on wildlife conflict while entirely disregarding the overarching threat posed by the ESA notification. He asserted that attempting to treat human-wildlife encounters as an isolated issue while turning a blind eye to policies that risk transforming inhabited agrarian lands into restricted forest buffers represents administrative negligence.
The protest organizers demanded that state authorities break their silence immediately and take legal and administrative steps to ensure Thiruvambady and adjoining residential zones are permanently exempted. Across Kozhikode district, there are 8 affected grama panchayats and 10 villages in the ESA draft notification.