The Kerala High Court on Monday asked the State government whether officials were entering properties of people, without prior notice, to lay survey stones with K-Rail inscribed on them, to ‘terrorise’ or ‘startle’ them.
Justice Devan Ramachandran made the oral observations when writ petitions challenging the survey of land for the proposed SilverLine project came up for hearing.
The court also asked if the government had any intention to scare the people into accepting the project by putting up such concrete poles, instead of the survey stones, as prescribed by the Kerala Survey and Boundaries Rules.
‘Only for this project’
The court observed that several developmental projects were materialising in the State, some of them involving a larger scale of displacement. However, only the K-Rail project was invoking “such widespread anguish and protests”.
The court said that it was not against any project. “Certainly, projects must come. We facilitate them, provided they act as per law... I don’t come across problems like this for the National Highways where acquisition of a larger scale had happened.”
When it was brought to the notice of the court that its earlier order restraining the survey was set aside by a Division Bench, which allowed the government to continue the survey, the court observed that "I know the Division Bench permitted you to carry on with the survey. But I'm certain it didn't authorise you to go against the law. Did the Bench permit you to plant survey stones with K-Rail's name on them," the court asked
