The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demanded here on Tuesday that the government should be taking legal steps to resume encroached government lands instead of merely putting up boards declaring government ownership of the land.
Addressing a press conference here, the BJP spokesperson George Kurien said that more government land had been encroached upon during the past three years than the land resumed by the government. Action against the Kannan Devan Hills Plantation Company would be possible only if the Congress and communists parties evicted their leaders from the quarters and bungalows provided by the company. The CPI(M) member of the Assembly S. Rajendran was refusing to vacate the house provided by the company despite a party directive.
The spokesman said the BJP would decide its agitational programme over the Munnar issue at the meeting of the State level office bearers of the party to be held on February 13. The party wanted the government to release the report on the satellite survey conducted on land in the Kannan Devan Hills. The government was making a lot of noise over the check dam constructed by the KDHP Company instead of taking over land belonging to the government.
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Mr. Kurien said the CPI(M) and the government were enacting a drama in Wayanad over the encroachment of land by M.V. Sreyams Kumar, MLA. There was no point in merely putting up boards declaring that his land belonged to the government, instead of taking legal steps to resume the land. Both the UDF and the LDF had been using the tribals for political purposes. None had granted them any land so far.
He said the verdict of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh against reservation for Muslims on religious basis vindicated the stand of the BJP. Ironically, the West Bengal government had declared reservation for the Muslims on the same day with an eye on the Muslim vote bank.