Date:14/01/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/01/14/stories/2008011454470100.htm

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Punitive steps against land mafia

Staff Reporter

Government land to be recovered from Tata group in three months: VS

V.S. Achuthanandan says Munnar mission will continue.

ALAPPUZHA: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan has said that the Munnar mission will continue with renewed vigour and at least 50 per cent of the 20,234 hectares of government land held by the Tata group will be recovered within three months.

Inaugurating a public meeting as part of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Alappuzha district conference at Cherthala, near here, on Sunday, Mr. Achuthanandan said the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government had showed the courage to take on the Tatas. Already, 445 hectares held by the Tata Group had been taken back, he said.

In a speech laced with popular measures the government had initiated, Mr. Achuthanandan said “stringent punitive steps” would be taken against the land mafia across the State before the forthcoming Budget session.

The government’s mission to reclaim encroached land in Munnar had yielded encouraging results with 4,856 hectares being recovered so far. The land thus obtained would be distributed to the landless poor, he said.

Preparations were progressing on a project to build a “new and modern” Munnar and to set up a full-fledged modern hospital at Sabarimala apart from the one that was inaugurated recently. Terming the measures taken to help devotees at Sabarimala a reply to those who had described the CPI(M) ‘an atheist party,’ Mr. Achuthanandan said no other government had understood the common man better than the present one.

Ridiculing Congress leader K. Karunakaran for not having a permanent political stand, Mr. Achuthanandan said the former had done nothing to curb the rise in prices of essential commodities when he was in power.

Saying that Railway Minister Lalu Prasad would soon inaugurate the wagon manufacturing unit at Autokast in Cherthala, the Chief Minister said steps were afoot to complete the Kollam-Kasaragod National Waterway.

Contrary to the schedule, CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan was not present at the meeting. Ministers T.M. Thomas Isaac and G. Sudhakaran, CPI(M) district secretary P.K. Chandranandan and others spoke.