The Mundakkai-Chooralmala landslide disaster of the Wayanad district of Kerala was one of the biggest natural calamities that claimed hundreds of lives, including women, men, children and even pregnant women. It is the responsibility of the government to rehabilitate the victims of the Mundakai disaster, in which more than four hundred people died; many people went missing. They lost everything, including property, and thousands of families lived in the face of the disaster.
Foreign company Harrisons is challenging the people of Kerala by taking the district administration’s move to take over a small portion of the HML and Elston estates that is required for rehabilitation under the Disaster Management Act 2005.
Just as the resettlement of Puthumala, Pettimudi and Kavalapara disaster victims is not done, Mundakai resettlement cannot be allowed to remain uncertain.
Harrisons is a foreign company that has illegally occupied hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Wayanad and other districts, leaving tens of thousands landless and homeless, including plantation workers and tribals.
The mainstream Left party that came to power in 1957 abandoned even the slogan “Land to the tiller.”
In the name of the protection /conservation of the plantation economy, the ruling so-called
The ‘ left’ government subordinated land laws to colonial interests. In 2016, Dr. M. G. Rajamanickam tabled a Special Officer’s report to the Pinarayi Vijayan government that advised the Pinarai government to confiscate all the 525,000 acres of plantation land illegally held by the illegitimate foreign plantation mafia. But Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan kept this report in cold storage.
Harrisons, Elston and the government are also colluding on the issue of land to resettle the disaster victims. As part of that, the company filed a case in the High Court against the government’s order to acquire land under the Disaster Management Act, and the government informed the court that it will not acquire the land until the court orders. It also assured that compensation would be paid for the land vested with the government. This is a betrayal of the disaster victims, a challenge to the people of Kerala, an insult to the progressive forces and a sabotage of rehabilitation.
Since the government was not very keen to enforce the laws of the land and enhance rehabilitation by capturing the government’s own land, our Party, CPIML RED STAR, launched an indefinite strike at the Wayanad Collectorate, raising the slogans below.
Declare the Wayanad disaster as a national disaster, Write off all the debts of the disaster victims, Take back all the land grabbed by the plantation mafias, including the Harrisons, rehabilitate the disaster-prone people, including Mundakai with agricultural land and habitable housing,
A mass march to the headquarters of the HML company, which is subverting rehabilitation, was part of strengthening the strike of the disaster victims in front of the Wayanad Collectorate for the last 100 days under the party’s leadership.
K V Prakashan
