Large tracts of land, including puramboke, in the panchayats of Kunnathukal and Perunkadavila, are now under the control of quarry mafia. A look through the data of land transactions in these panchayats over the past two decades points to the gradual concentration of land in the hands of a few.
According to data from the Kunnathukal sub-registrar office, there were a total of 2,284 land transactions in the year 2000, the number increased to 2,324 in 2005. By 2010, a period during which quarry owners were busy acquiring land, the transactions had peaked to 2,747. But, after that, there has been a gradual fall in the number of annual transactions, with the number dropping to just 1,608 in 2015. This year, with a month to go, the number is 1,389.
“One of the major reasons for the drop in number of land transactions is because huge chunks of land has already already been acquired by quarry owners. The large number of quarries in the Perunkadavila and Kunnathukal panchayats are testimony to this. Part of the reason for the drop is the tighter norms in land transactions and the weakening of the real estate market,” says an official at the office.
The quarry owners usually purchase or take on lease private land near puramboke land, and slowly begin encroaching upon the puramboke. The amount of puramboke land in these panchayats and their boundaries have not properly been ascertained yet.
In September 2017, the High Court had, in response to a writ petition, directed the Land Revenue Commissioner, the District Collector, and the Neyyattinkara tahsildar to urgently demarcate the puramboke land, fix the boundaries, and make the survey marks in the survey numbers 115/1 and 115/7 in block 38 of the Anavoor village and survey numbers 546/1 and 525/2 in block 26 of the Perunkadavila village.
No such survey of puramboke land has been done yet. With all the boundaries of the land here being razed down on a daily basis, it will be a hard task to even ascertain the puramboke land from amid the quarries.
The court also issued an interim order banning quarrying within 500 metres of Pandavan Para in Perunkadavila, notified by the State government as a protected archaeological monument.
