The zero-landless scheme of the State government is a hollow one, Adivasi Dalit Munnetta Samithi (ADMS) president Sreeraman Koyyon has said.
The representatives of the 1,200 landless families at Arippa in Kollam district had taken out a march to Parliament on February 7. This was to call the attention of the Union government to the apathy of the State government in solving the issues of Adivasis, he said in a statement here on Saturday.
The families had been on an agitation for 400 days now, he said.
The agitators had submitted memorandums at the office of the Prime Minister and the Union Minister for Rural Development seeking their intervention in settling the agitation. They sought the allocation of 10 cents of land each for the construction of houses and one hectare of land each for farming purposes, he said.
The ADMS delegation was received in New Delhi by Ekta Parishad founder P.V. Rajagopal. Human rights activist Swamy Agnivesh promised all support to the ADMS agitation.
Parishad leaders Raman Singh and Aneesh Thillankery, Dalit rights leader Paul Divakaran, Social Justice Forum convener Sathinath Chatterjee, People’s Green Party leader P.K. Yadav, Youth Congress leader M. Liju, and some students from the Jawaharlal Nehru University also extended support to the ADMS agitation, Mr. Koyyon said.
