On July 30, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court is set to conduct the next hearing on multiple petitions filed by and on behalf of workers of the Manjolai estate in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu.
What is happening at the estate?
Nestled deep within the Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve in Tirunelveli, the Manjolai estate encompasses Manjolai, Kakkachi, Nalumukku, Oothu, and Kuthiraivetti villages. It hosts post offices, bus stops, ration shops, schools, and health centres, among other public facilities.
The estate also includes a tea factory in Oothu. The Wadia Group’s Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited (BBTC) has been operating a tea estate here since 1929, on a 99-year lease.
On May 30, 2024, BBTC said it would cease operations and hand over the underlying land to the Tamil Nadu government. This is because the State had notified this land as ‘forest’ in 2018 and because the lease would expire in 2028.
Caught in the crossfire between the BBTC’s decision and the State government’s claim are the workers at the estate. In 2001, the estate had 6,600 people living here; of them 1,586 were permanent workers while the other 5,000 worked on the plantation. When the BBTC announced its decision, several hundred workers — most of them Dalits and landless — were forced to accept the terms of a voluntary retirement scheme, vacate their homes, and collect their dues and bonuses by June 14.
On June 21, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court heard the petitions and ordered the status quo. The petitions had asked the Court to direct State authorities to cancel the voluntary retirement applications submitted by the tea plantation workers, provide free house-site patta, houses, 4 ha of land, other monetary relief, jobs for family members, and implement the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, or FRA, 2006 — or to have the Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation Limited, a State government undertaking take over the plantation.
How was the estate created?
BBTC established the Manjolai estate in 1929 on 3,388.78 ha of land leased from the Singampatti family. In 1952, the Tamil Nadu government assumed control of the erstwhile Singampatti land, including the area leased to BBTC, using the Madras Estates (Abolition and Conversion into Ryotwari) Act 1948. The Revenue Department handed the land over to the Forest Department while allowing BBTC to continue to possess the leased land in a 1958 order.
BBTC developed 1,716.59 ha as a plantation and had to preserve a 392.55 ha parcel in the Kusangaliar catchment area for water conservation. The BBTC premises and the roads leading up to Manjolai were brought under the Manimuthar township in 1963. In the 1970s, BBTC set aside 449.4 ha of land to help protect lion-tailed macaques there.
How did the area become a forest?
In 1978, Tamil Nadu began the process of notifying the 22,972.20 ha — including the 3,388.78 ha leased to BBTC — in Singampatti as a reserve forest under the Tamil Nadu Forest Act 1882, and registered it as ‘forest’ in the revenue records.
A year later, the Forest Settlement Officer upheld BBTC’s claim that its land should be exempted from the forest notification. But the Forest Department challenged this decision in the District Court. The Court remanded the matter to the Forest Settlement Officer for a new disposal.
After considerable delay, the Forest Settlement Officer rejected BBTC’s claim in 2010. BBTC challenged the rejection but the Madras High Court ruled against them on September 1, 2017. However, this Court allowed BBTC to continue to possess the leased land until February 11, 2028.
On January 19, 2018, the Supreme Court dismissed BBTC’s appeal. On September 19 the same year, the 22,972.20 ha of land was notified as a Reserve Forest.
How is the estate related to the tiger reserve?
Under Project Tiger, the Tamil Nadu government constituted the Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) in 1988 as an administrative and management category. It became a legal category in 2007 when the government notified 89,500 ha of land as critical tiger habitat under the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLPA) 1972. The government also notified another 70,654.20 ha of land as the buffer area on August 13, 2012. As a result, KMTR totals 1.60 lakh ha — including Manjolai estate.
According to the WLPA, KMTR’s tiger conservation plan should ensure the safety of tigers as well as adopt “ecologically compatible land uses … for addressing the livelihood concerns of local people”. To this end, Tamil Nadu is required to “ensure the agricultural, livelihood, developmental and other interests of the people living in the tiger reserve”.
Further, the WLPA requires the notification of a tiger reserve to recognise local residents’ forest rights. It also allows these individuals to be relocated only if they opt to.
How did the workers’ issue arise?
Inside Tiger Reserves, the FRA stipulates how and which forest rights are to be recognised. And the FRA prohibits evictions before these rights have been determined. These rights include possession by individuals of up to 4 ha for housing and farming, all conceivable community rights except hunting, and community forest resource rights.
Taking the two Acts together, the Tamil Nadu government had to recognise the forest rights of KMTR’s residents and obtain forest dwellers’ consent to relocate (while confirming to them that other reasonable ways in which the people and the tigers can coexist aren’t feasible). The State was also to provide a resettlement package for the individuals and communities to be displaced with the consent of the Ward Sabhas and the individuals. Separately, BBTC will have to settle estate workers’ dues under the relevant labour laws.
However, Tamil Nadu’s notification of KMTR disregarded provisions of the WLPA and the FRA, leading to the current dispute.
What are the State’s legal obligations?
For those who have opted in to relocate, Tamil Nadu has to complete the rights recognition under the FRA, provide all facilities at the relocation site, and finally acquire these rights under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013.
The State is also required to pay fair compensation to all affected families, including twice the market value of the land, value of assets attached to the land (including flora), a subsistence allowance for a year, a one-time financial assistance for relocation, the cost of building materials, belongings, and cattle, and a one-time resettlement allowance.
The resettlement plan includes the provision of alternative fuels, power connections, roads, drinking water, etc. The State is also expected to ensure forest rights on non-timber forest produce and common property resources, and use and livelihood rights to such forest or common property in the area close to the place of resettlement.
What options does the State have?
The workers’ livelihoods are from the forest lands that were leased to BBTC, so the forest land falls in the FRA’s purview. Non-tribal workers belonging to a community that lived in the region for 75 years and whose primary source of income depended on these forest lands are eligible as ‘Other Traditional Forest Dwellers’ to claim rights.
Finally, those whose claims are rejected can’t be evicted (per the Supreme Court order dated February 28, 2019).
Alternatively, the State government can divert a portion of the Manjolai estate developed for plantations to settle the workers, after obtaining the approval of the Union Ministry of Environment and the Central Empowered Committee under the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam 1980. It may also be exempt from paying the net present value or undertake compensatory afforestation if the beneficiaries are landless.
Being forest land recorded as such before October 25, 1980 — when the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 entered into force — and changed to non-forest use before December 12, 1996, this portion of the Manjolai estate can’t be administered by this Act. However, a challenge to the amendment that created this possibility is pending in the Supreme Court and the Court has for now stayed the exemption.
C.R. Bijoy examines natural resource conflicts and governance issues.
