Welfare Party of India Kerala chapter intensified its agitation for land by taking out a march and erecting occupation signboard on the land under the illegal possession of Harrison Group at Chundel in Wayanad district of the state.
Making it explicitly clear that there is enough land for distribution among the landless poor, the party workers erected a board proclaiming ‘this land belongs to the landless.’ This land at Chundel under Harrison is a lease-period expired one like many other cases spread all over the state.
The march by hundreds of WPI volunteers to Chundel Harrison estate is the second stage of the land agitation initiated by the party with a mammoth rally to the government secretariat at Trivandrum last month.
The march was stopped at the estate gate by the police. The board announcing the occupation was erected jointly by a tribal woman named Vellachi, who belongs to the majority Paniya sect tribal of Wayanad district and by WPI state general secretary Ambujakshan.
Earlier inaugurating the public meeting prior to the march at Chundel town, Abdul Hameed Vaniyambalam, state vice president of WPI said that the party has taken up the tireless task to ensure distribution of land under illegal possession of land mafia to the all landless poor. He alleged that the left and right political fronts of Kerala were hands in glove with the land mafia.
Neither the UDF that fired at Adivasis agitating for land at Muthanga in Wayanad in February 2003 nor the LDF that branded Adivasis, Scheduled Castes and Backward Class people agitating for land at Chengara almost for a year in 2007 as extremists and terrorists has moral right to take up the land issue of the landless now.
He continued that while thousands of hectares of land are illegally possessed by corporates and mafia, Adivasis and Dalits are branded as terrorists and extremists for demanding land. He said that by identifying legal and surplus plots of land in this way, the party wants to disprove the hollowness of government stand of inadequacy of distributable land, and cautioned that if effective steps are not taken by the government, the party will be compelled to forcefully occupy such lands.
The public meeting was presided over by state vice-president Surendran Karippuzha and addressed by Prema Pisharati, state vice-president, Ambujakshan, state general secretary and district presidents of Kozhikode, Kasargod and Wayanad.