COIMBATORE: Irulas in 24 settlements at Pillur are deprived of basic facilities like roads, electricity and houses, because the place is a reserved forest and their request is mired in red tape. "We have been demanding roads, primary health centres and other basic facilities, but nothing has reached us," said Vellayan, a resident of Kadambankombai village.
"We were to receive concrete houses and roads through various schemes long ago, but the restrictions laid down by the forest department hindered the process of initiating it," he added.
When asked about the delay in implementing the schemes in the area, a district administration official said that approval from the District Forest Office is getting delayed, because of which the process has been put on hold.
Pillur, designated as a reserved forest, is divided into four panchayats namely Nellithurai, Kemmaramplayam, Velliyangadu and Tholampalayam. The first three panchayats comprise around 24 tribal settlements.
Though the majority of people living in this place are from the Irula tribe, non-tribals are in the position of panchayat leader for the past ten years. According to the Panchayat Election Rules 2011, "under sections 25,27 and 29 of the Act, seats in different constituencies reserved for and allotted on a rotational basis to Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and other backward classes and to women by the district Magistrate, under direction and control of the State Election Commission".
Former panchayat leader of Nellithurai Sadhasivam A took the initiative for submitting the proposal to make the 24 settlements into a single panchayat to the district Collector. He said that using the fund in the reserved area is a herculean task for the non-tribal leaders as there are so many formalities to bring any change to a reserved forest area.
"Now, there would not be many complications as many of the people have got their Individual Forest Rights (IFR) and Community Forest Rights (CFR) claims approved. So, when a tribal becomes the panchayat leader, they would be easily able to reach the authorities without many hindrances and can meet their demands soon," said Sadhasivam.
"We didn't raise this issue even after the last panchayat election when a non-tribal woman was elected as leader until we found that the woman was showing false claims of the fund spent on each of these places. After that, we started raising this issue again and, soon we are going to resubmit the proposal to the collector," said Murugesh, a tribal resident of Nellithurai panchayat.
VP Gunasekaran, a tribal rights activist said the panchayat system which was created to be instrumental in hearing the voices of the people at the local level of society goes futile due to insufficient planning or because of some mistakes at the grass-root level.
According to a resident of that village, Ragu, the set-up is that many of the settlements go into the panchayats where the non-tribal population is in majority and because of that he claimed, "the funds are being not used for the tribal people's purposes".
"When 1,400 votes are sufficient to make a separate panchayat, we have more than 2,000 votes, so it won't be a problem to make a separate panchayat consisting only of tribal people," said Ragu.
When asked S Selvi, Nellithurai panchayat leader, about the project implementations and schemes, she said there are multiple problems in implementing that. "Constructing roads and bringing government schemes into the villages are very difficult as they are under the control of the forest department," she said.
The tribals handed over the proposal to A Raja, Member of Parliament for the Nilgiris constituency at the Forest Rights Act meeting held in 2021, requesting their demand for the creation of a separate panchayat comprising all the 24 settlements.
Citing the creation of a separate panchayat for tribal community, Sadhasivam said, a panchayat can be created when there is a minimum of 1000 votes. "Their revenue can be sourced from the Pillur dam, Powerhouse and tourism," he added.