When agitations for land intensified in Wayanad under the aegis of tribal outfits of major political parties in 2012, thousands of landless tribal families had participated in it. They claimed their right to land by erecting huts on forestland.
Those who had participated in similar agitations till 2004 were assigned land under the Forest Rights Act, 2006. Now, a Supreme Court order has directed their eviction from the land.
The tribespeople had opened 53 protest centres in various parts of the district under the South and North Wayanad forest divisions. Though Forest Department officials had arrested 826 protesters, including 296 women, they returned to the same place after local courts granted them bail.
Once the intensity of the agitation subdued, a few among them returned home.
Those who did not possess a single cent of land chose to stay back. Many among them have started cultivating ginger, coffee, and pepper on the land.
Broken promises
Balakrishnan, a member of the Anappara Kattunayakka hamlet near Pakkom, has planted nearly 300 pepper vines and 200 coffee plants on an acre of vested forestland ‘assigned’ to him by leaders of the Adivasi Congress, an outfit of the Congress party at its Irulam protest centre near Pulpally.
Apparently, the activists promised him that he would not be evicted from the land at any cost.
Sujatha, 35, a resident of the Kottakkolly Paniya hamlet and an activist of the Adivasi Kshema Samiti, the tribal arm of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said her party men had told her that they should not leave the agitation venue at Cheeyambam, near Pulpally, till they secured their own land. They still live in makeshift huts, plagued by dearth of drinking water, unhygienic surroundings, and attack of wild animals.
“If we are evicted from the land, we have no idea where we will go along with my three children,” Ms. Sujatha said. Though the Poothadi grama panchayat had constructed toilets for a few of them, many of them were yet to be utilised owing to water shortage.
