Tamil Nadu

Collector holds peace meet

Tiruvallur: The Tiruvallur district administration has told the Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam that it was committed to distributing government lands allegedly in possession of Karnataka High Court Judge P.D. Dinakaran to the landless poor, but it could not fix any time frame since the matter was pending before the Supreme Court.

C. Shanmugam, treasurer of the sangam, told The Hindu that throughout the peace meeting convened by the district Collector, he and his colleagues never deviated from the three-charter of demands raised by his organisation. The meeting was presided over by district Collector V. Palanikumar. “The district administration had made it clear that it could not do anything till the issue was finally settled in the Supreme Court,” Mr Shanmugam, who led the discussion on behalf of his organisation, said.

Besides urging district administration to distribute the lands in possession of Justice P.D. Dinakaran to 470 landless poor in the Kaverirajapuram village, the sangam demanded that the lake, ponds and grazing lands be immediately opened to the local people.

The third demand of the sangam was to retrieve the lands held by Mr. Dinakaran in violation of land ceiling act and distribute them to the poor.

The meeting convened to persuade the sangam to give up the “land retrieval movement” to reclaim the government lands allegedly grabbed by Mr. Dinakaran failed as the office bearers were firm on going ahead with the protest.

“We have made the preparations for the protest and we will assemble people to march towards the land,” said Mr. Shanmugam.

On the government side the meeting was represented by DIG Durairaj, Superintendent of Police G.V. Sarangan and revenue officials.

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