A joint survey that was to be held on Saturday by the Forest Department and the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) to sort out differences over forestland in the latter’s possession at Sabarimala failed to take off.
TDB president Prayar Gopalakrishnan, who reached Pampa to oversee the survey, returned to Thiruvananthapuram in the afternoon.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan said a TDB survey team, headed by a Tahsildar, reached Sabarimala in the morning, following a decision taken at a high-level meeting in Kochi on June 27. But the survey could not be conducted as the Forest Department team did not have the sketch and plan of the disputed sites.
He alleged that the department was staking a false claim to some areas on the 67.5 acres of forestland allotted to the board by the government. He said 6.5 cents of land where the TDB had constructed magazines to store explosives for the Vedi Vazhipadu offering had been allotted to it by the government in 1965. The Forest Department now claimed that the magazines stood on the land belonging to it. He said the department had kept both the keys of the checkpost constructed on the Pampa-Sannidhanam path, in violation of a pact which said one key would be with the TDB.
The TDB chief said he had been assured of full cooperation in conducting the forestland survey after July 6.
