Various Dalit, Adivasi organisations and like-minded democratic movements will jointly launch a struggle based on the slogan ‘Land, Civil Rights, Power’ in Kerala.
Announcing the formation of the new movement, M. Geethanandan, convener, and Sunny M. Kapikkad, chairman, Bhu Adhikara Samrakshana Samiti, said here on Saturday that the new movement would be formally launched by Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, MLA, in Thiruvananthapuram on April 24 at a rally of Dalit-Adivasi-Bahujan people in front of the Secretariat building.
A Raj Bhavan March, road show from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram and zonal conventions are also on the anvil, he said.
Demands
The new movement will raise the demands for a total revamp of the about Kerala Model through comprehensive implementation of land redistribution and liberation of the Dalit-Adivasi population from communally organised colonies to the farmland. It will protest against the recent Supreme Court verdict which ‘diluted’ the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the High Court verdict which had set aside the Rajamanikyam report on plantations in Kerala, and the State government policy of appeasement of forward communities.
Ashok Bharti, chairman, National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), Pradeep Narwal, chairman, Bhim Army Defence Committee, and leaders of various Dalit organisations in Kerala will participate in the convention.
Other demands being made by the new movement include enactment of a new law to rectify the apex court judgement on the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, a judicial inquiry into the death of 12 Dalits in police shooting during the April 2 hartal, takeover of plantations illegally possessed by large landowners and redistribution of land among Dalit, Adivasi, Dalit Christians, plantation labourers and the landless, implementation of the Muthanga Package, reinstatement of the rights of those who participated in the Chengara and Arippa struggles, and moving the Harrisons Plantation case out of Kerala.
