Southern States - Kerala   

AGM to broadbase stir: Janu

By Our Staff Reporter

KANNUR MAY 10. The Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha (AGM) will broadbase the Adivasi land agitation with the objective of consolidating all ethnically marginalised communities that had lost its community rights and control over resources as part of a fresh struggle for a comprehensive project covering land assignment, rehabilitation and restoration of their rights and resources.

"Adivasis and Dalits, as well as sections of people engaged in farming and traditional sectors, were among those who had lost control over their resources. As they were all facing same problems, the agitation for land to the Adivasis should address the issues that concern all of them,'' the AGM president, C.K. Janu, and the Adivasi-Dalit Action Committee (ADAC) general convener, M. Geethanandan, told a press conference here today. The AGM's `Muthanga Agitation Campaign Yatra' that would be launched in Wayanad on May 11 and would conclude in Thiruvananthapuram on May 31 was aimed to kick off a broad democratic movement of the sections that had been denied social justice and human rights, they said.

The social activists, including Medha Patkar, Nanjunda Swamy and B.D. Sharma, would attend the yatra's inauguration at Sulthan Batheri, they said adding that the campaign yatra that Ms. Janu was leading would tour all districts to mobilise the movement.

They even welcomed the `changed' attitude of the CPI(M)-controlled Adivasi Kshema Samithy (AKS) that had earlier opposed the AGM's agitation.

"The AKS that once opposed our agitation demanding transfer of the Aralam Farm for rehabilitating the landless Adivasis had now veered round to the idea that the farm land be assigned to the Adivasis. What remains to be seen is whether the established Left parties such as the CPI(M) were prepared to introduce a comprehensive protective law that will ensure Adivasi Gothra panchayats envisaged in the 1996 legislation regarding such autonomous panchayats,'' Ms. Janu said.

The AGM and the ADAC were raising the demand for a tribal self-Government based on the 1996 Adivasi grama panchayat legislation in the backdrop of the A.K. Antony Government having gone back upon the Adivasi Agreement and started to let lose a reign of terror on `ethnically marginalising' the Adivasis, Ms. Janu and Mr. Geethanandan said adding that the AGM's rights establishment agitation at the Aralam Farm and Muthanga would continue.

They said that the UDF dispensation that had announced that the farm would be taken over by the State Government was now keeping a studied silence on the issue.

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