A writ petition has been filed in the Madras High Court Bench here seeking a direction to Madurai city police to permit a group of landless poor to hold a demonstration against IAS officer U. Sagayam for allegedly “cheating” them on the issue of grant of free house site patta (landownership documents) when he served as Collector here between 2011 and 2012.
The petitioner, K.K. Ramesh of Tamil Nadu Centre for Public Interest Litigation, a private organisation based here, claimed that he had been assisting a group of 17 poor families since June 2011 in obtaining free house site patta. He made them give representations to the then Collector on more than three occasions seeking allotment of government wastelands at Nilayur near here but to no avail.
Hence, a writ petition was filed in the High Court in September 2011 and a Division Bench disposed it of with a direction to the Collector to consider the request on merits and in accordance with law. Nevertheless, Mr. Sagayam complied with the order and issued patta to the petitioners only on January 26, 2012 after the filing of a contempt of court application on November 22, 2011, the petitioner added.
His affidavit went on to state that the patta issued to the beneficiaries turned out to be invalid since a group of Dalits had already been granted patta for the same property in 2001 itself. Thereafter, the beneficiaries were made to run from pillar to post seeking clarification and finally got a police case registered against the revenue officials this year on the basis of court directions.
Since Mr. Sagayam had now been appointed as a Legal Commissioner to probe granite mining in Madurai district, the group of 17 attempted to stage a demonstration against him. But the police prevented them; Mr. Ramesh alleged and sought for a direction to the Tallakulam police here to permit them to express their grievance in a peaceful manner.
The writ petition is expected to be listed for hearing before Justice M. Venugopal on Tuesday.
