Newindpress

Munnar, Jul 3: Declaring war on the Tatas, Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan on Tuesday led an eviction task force in Munnar during a heavy downpour, personally pulling down boards of Tata Tea Ltd and replacing them with State Government boards.

Promising to “reclaim every bit of government land” from the company in the hill resort, Achuthanandan said he would “stop at nothing” until his government took back over 50,000 acres. The land, he alleged, had been grabbed by the Tatas.

After segregating ecologically sensitive land, the rest of the reclaimed land will be forked out to landless labourers and the homeless poor, he said, describing the drive as “a historic initiative” to bring to Munnar the state’s 37-year-old land reforms programme.

Achuthanandan warned the Tatas that if they tried to obstruct the government bid through courts, the tea company might be left with no land at all. “The government will consider taking back the leased land as well as that the Tatas possess if they try to hinder this effort through the court or by other means,” he said.

If the government pulls this off, the Tatas are likely to lose almost half the land in their control. A senior Tata Tea source, however, said that the company was all set to take the issue to court immediately. “There is absolutely no justification for what is going on,” the source said.

A company advisor said they had nothing to do with the 1119 acres of land that the CM and his official set out to “recapture”. “It’s a poor propaganda stunt. The land they reclaimed today (Tuesday) is nothing but virgin forest with no plantation at all, and it was clearly vested with the Forest department way back in 1971.

We have nothing to do with it,” said T Damu, advisor to the Tata Group. Damu said there was no reason to move the courts yet “but we consider the threat to take away our legally leased land if we go to court as an insult to democratic values.”

K Sureshkumar, head of the Munnar task force, maintained that the land was under the control of the Tatas. “The issue is not whether or not this is Forest department land. Our findings indicate that this land was in the company’s control. Why else did they put up their board there?” he asked, referring to the company board that the CM got removed.

According to Damu, the board in question had always been there, well before the Forest department’s takeover of the land decades ago. “Our men merely repainted the board while they were touching up all boards,” he said.

The Tatas possess land in Munnar on the strength of an original lease agreement over a century old, passed down to it. The land was originally part of the 588 sq km in Munnar that a local chieftain leased to a British lawyer, John D Munro, in 1877.

Two years later, the lawyer passed it on to a British plantation company Finley and Moore. The Tatas entered the deal in 1964, setting up Tata Finley Ltd. Finley withdrew in 1983, and the Tatas became the sole lessees.

But Achuthanandan had his own take. “For decades, the Tatas hogged almost all the land here, running a parallel government in this town. Even the local panchayat and government departments had to beg for land to set up offices, bus stands or basic civic amenities.

Everyone here, big and small, had to plead with the Tatas to be allowed even to draw electricity connections. They had even admitted in an affidavit to the High Court that they had been selling grabbed government land in pieces,” he alleged.