The current ownership of an estimated 5 lakh acres of plantation land in Kerala will come under legal scrutiny soon.
A few firms and a handful of individuals hold the vast swathes of arable land cultivated by British planters prior to Independence.
The State police will constitute a special investigation team (SIT) to verify the legality of their ownership. The move is in adherence to an order of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC).
The SIT will initially identify all pre-Independence British plantations in Kerala. It will trawl through a tranche of revenue documents, some since 1901, to find out how the “present occupiers” came into possession of the plantations and whether successive post-Independence governments had legitimised their ownership.
Vigilance and Revenue Department officials adept in prosecuting land grab cases will assist the SIT. Forensic document examiners will help it verify the genuineness of questioned documents.
An inquiry by IG, Crime Branch, R. Sreejith had prompted the SHRC to order the investigation.
The SIT will identify plantations without genuine ownership records. Such estates can be deemed government land and the “illegal occupiers”, if any, evicted and prosecuted under the provisions of the Land Conservancy Act. A denial of right-of-way complaint lodged by an Idukki resident against a plantation company in Peruvanthanam in 2008 had paved way for the investigation.
Mr. Sreejith’s report stated that the firm had forged records to fraudulently hold the land. The connivance of local officials was suspected.
The report stated that scores of petitions from the landless poor revealed that private individuals and firms held vast expanses of land illegally and their claims to ownership had never been verified. Most claims of possession were not backed by title deeds. The report stated that the Enforcement Directorate should verify the outflow of money from such lands to foreign countries and tax havens, if any.
