Revenue Minister, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan said that the Government will cancel the land transactions involving the selling of land belonging to farmers of R-block by the Kuttamangalam Service Cooperative Bank and will move ahead with steps to take over the land, as the first step of restoring the land back to the farmers.
Talking to reporters at R-Block in Kuttanad in the district on Thursday morning after visiting the land sold illegally by the Bank for recovering the loan amount due by the farmers, the Minister said that the previous Government had disbanded the Bank, but did not take legal action against the guilty. The UDF Government will seriously consider bringing the guilty to book, he said.
He said that the Government after examining the reports of Joint Registrar of the Cooperative Department submitted in 2007 had found that this was a cent per cent `inhuman step' and did not have the stamp of approval of the Cooperative Department at any stage including the take over and subsequent selling of the land to private parties.
The Bank failed to fix the liabilities of individual farmers. The Bank, instead of extracting the liability, took over the entire land and illegally sold it. It also did not extend the One Time Settlement (OTS) to the farmers, he alleged. The land was also sold at a cost lesser than its valuation cost.
It was a serious violation of the Land Reforms Act and the law department also found many violations in this regard, he said.
The land in question was around 150 acres of surplus land in R-Block which the 127 farmers had pledged for loan from Kuttamangalam Service Cooperative Bank, controlled by CPI (M) in 1977-78 period. The farmers had resumed the land from erstwhile landlord Murikkan following a struggle for surplus land in 1970. Since all the farmers, except one, were unable to repay the loan of Rs 28 lakh and its interest adding up to a total of Rs 70 lakh, the Bank had sold it illegally to private parties.
The then LDF Government had dismissed the ruling committee of the Bank and had ordered a judicial probe into the incident. The issue snowballed into a major controversy in the area during the previous LDF Government and then opposition leader, Oommen Chandy had promised to acquire the land and restore it to farmers when the UDF comes to power.
The Minister, who travelled one and a half hours by boat from Alappuzha town to R-Block, was accompanied by District Collector, Sourabh Jain, other officials and District Congress Committee president, A.A. Shukoor. Kuttanad MLA, Thomas Chandy, was also present when the Minister talked to reporters.
Published - February 23, 2012 04:01 pm IST
