By TCN News,
Kochi: The Kerala High Court has asked for detail about Dalits in the state and their condition of living, acting on a complaint filed by the Harrison Company that Dalits are forcing marches towards the private lands of the company. V. Anil Kumar, Under Secretary for Dalits, has filed an affidavit showing that about 14,200 tribal Dalits of the state are inhabited, and made it clear that the government is moving forward to allot lands to these people.
According to the Census report of 2001, Kerala had 3,64,182 Dalits. In the year 2002, other tribes were also added, increasing the number to about 4 lakhs. Among this, there are 1,10,000 families. Many among them were landless.
In 2001 the state government started welfare programs to distribute land among these Dalits. And the lands in outskirts were acquired by the government for this purpose. As a part, 8345.34 acres of land was distributed to 6125 Dalits. The collectors of respective districts were responsible to handover those lands.
The Dalits had submitted 35,658 applications to the Government, for 1, 11,262 acres of land. After the close examination of 3,762 from these applications, approximately 4574.30 acres of land is sanctioned and the Government is keenly considering the rest. Also, 2475.60 hectares of unused land was given to 7, 826 Dalits by 31st December 2009.
The Government is planning to give at least 1 acre land including a house to each family of Dalits. As per the census account, the government will need around 15,000 acres for this, but as they don’t have that much of land, they will have either to buy or take up the rest of the land from huge landlords. As the first step, the government has allowed 50 crore rupees for the consuming of 1000 acres of land at Wayanad. For meeting the other basic needs of the group, Government allowed 1000 crore at the rate of Rs 5 lakh for each acre of land.
“Many landowners have lots of illegal land with them, which is against the land owning law. Politicians and officers do support this process and deny the poor Dalits of their lawful land”, opines the Dalits Welfare Society. The Society is for the enlistment of the Dalits. And it is through various peaceful struggles that they own the land they have now.
About 1,500 Dalits comprising of women and children were arrested for this struggling protests.
It is the duty of the Government to care for the rights of its citizens and thus, they also have to take action against those who keep in hand the land of these poor tribe.