The Hindu : CM deceiving Adivasis: Janu

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 05, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

CM deceiving Adivasis: Janu

By Our Staff Reporter

KOCHI July 4. The Adivasi leader, C. K. Janu, has alleged that the Chief Minister, Mr. A. K. Antony, has colluded with the CPI(M) to torpedo the Adivasi land allotment accord the Government had reached with the Adivasi-Dalit Samara Samithy last October.

At a news conference here on Thursday, she said the Government's recent agreement with the CPI(M)-led Adivasi Kshema Samithy was an attempt to nullify the Adivasi-Government agreement on October 16 reached after one-and-a-half month's siege of the Secretariat.

She said the October agreement was signed by the Chief Minister, the Chief Secretary and other top Government officials. The Government was now violating this agreement by entering into another pact with the CPI(M)-led organisation. This was a plain betrayal by the Chief Minister, she said. ``The Government is deceiving the Adivasis by signing two separate agreements containing widely varying clauses on the same issue with two separate bodies,'' she said. According to her, this exposed the Chief Minister's `hidden plan' to torpedo the October 16 pact.

The CPI(M)-led samithy, after an understanding with the Forest Minister, G. Sudhakaran, and the SC/ST Welfare Minister, M. A. Kuttappan, had called off its agitation. The Government had promised the samithy that the land allotment to the landless Adivasis would resume on September 1. This would be after an Adivasi Mission drive to identify the landless by calling in new applications in a revised format. The mission's earlier survey that identified the landless would no longer be valid. The new allotment would be to families and not to Adivasi individuals.

The CPI(M) had launched the agitation in Wayanad to press for land for Adivasis. Hundreds of people, including several Adivasi men, women and children, were arrested by police and kept in custody. One Adivasi woman had given birth while in the central prison in Kannur and, because of the woeful conditions in the jail, the newborn had died, thus kicking up a row and putting the CPI(M) on the mat. The CPI(M) agitation was generally viewed as an attempt to steal the thunder out of the Janu-led organisation's agitation.

Ms. Janu said the Chief Minister was responsible for the decision not to allot forest land to the landless Adivasis following the Mathikettan row. He was also responsible for the withdrawal of funds allotted to the Adivasi Mission and the replacement of the mission chairman, K. Madhava Menon, with the Forest Secretary.

She also alleged that the Government had desisted from allotting land to the Adivasis in Wayanad in order to promote the CPI(M) agitation and thus upset the criteria for land allotment. Again, the Madhava Menon-headed commission had let the oorukoottams (Adivasi hamlet committees) to decide who should get the land and had thus kept politicians out of the picture. The accord with the CPI(M) body facilitated political intervention and sharing of the spoils between the Congress and the CPI(M).

Ms. Janu said the suspension of several Forest and Revenue officials had helped the `real culprits' to go scot-free. She sought a CBI probe, and not just a bureaucratic investigation, into the Mathikettan encroachment. Asked about the suspension of the former Idukki Collector, she said he was in office only for two years, but the forest encroachment had been on for several years.

The general convener of the Adivasi-Dalit Samara Samithy, M. Geethanandan, said a `tribal court' would be held at Mananthawadi on August 24 to `try' the Forest Department which had over the decades committed several `crimes' against the Adivasis.

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CM deceiving Adivasis: Janu