E.M.MANOJ
KALPETTA: Protest is brewing among the tribal organisations against the move of the Kerala Institute for Research, Training and Development Studies of Scheduled Castes and Tribes (KIRTADS) to set up a tribal museum at Sugandhagiri cardamom project area near Lakkidi in the district.
The project is one of the largest resettlement projects in Asia that was launched exclusively to rehabilitate bonded tribal people in Wayanad by the end of 1970.
P.P. Chandran, president of the South Wayanad Girijan Joint farming cooperative society, the implementing agency to execute entire activities of the project, told The Hindu that when the project launched it was planned to rehabilitate as many as 750 landless tribal families from various parts of the district .
The project was envisaged to train the tribesmen in cardamom, coffee and pepper cultivation and later handed over five acres of land to each tribal family under joint farming and 3,500 acres of vested forest land were earmarked for the project, Mr. Chandran said.
However, the government had recently issued an order that handed over 20 acres of the 40 acres of land of the Tribal Rehabilitation Development Mission (TRDM) to KITDAS for setting up a museum .
“The legal right of the land belongs to the society and there is not a single cent of land belonging to the TRDM in the project area as the government claim and such a move is grossly illegal and against the order of the Supreme Court in 2010. The Court had held that the land shall be exclusively used for rehabilitation of landless tribes and shall not be used for any other purpose.
But the government had violated the apex court order by allotting 20 acres of land possessed by the Society for more than half a century for setting up a museum. . If the land provide for the setting up of a museum, the Society and the members depending on cultivation will be deprived off the land and the very purpose of the assignment of land will be defeated.
Moreover, as many as 68 tribal families who were resettled on the land in the 1980s were yet to get land under the project owing to technical reasons, he said. Hence, the decision to allot land to KRITADS is illegal and arbitrary and such a decision was taken without hearing the Society, he added.
If the KIRTADs would move ahead with the project, the society would challenge it in the High court, Mr. Chandran said.
Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (AGMS) leader M. Geethanadan said the TRDM had been set up mainly for rehabilitating the landless tribal families and the move of the government would against the motto of the organisation. Moreover, the land at Sughadhagiri was allotted only to resettle the landless tribal people and the land could not be used for other purposes. Hence, the government order should repel and handed over the land to the deserving tribal families, he said.
