9 Feb 2010, 1844 hrs IST

Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala: Opposition leader Oommen Chandy today demanded convening of an all-party conference to sort out the problems related to land encroachment in Munnar.

Addressing a press conference here, Chandy said that the all-party conference had become inevitable because of the LDF Government’s failure to evict encroachers.

He alleged that the LDF was making all out efforts to protect encroached property owned by constituent parties and close relatives of party leaders using farmers, small traders and tribals as a shield.

The Opposition parties had extended full support to the government right from the beginning when it launched evictions in Munnar. The Munnar eviction mission failed because the government lacked political will and not because of the lack of support from the opposition, the media or the general public.

The CPI (M) was sponsoring large scale encroachments under its tribal outfit in Wayanad to conceal the governments failure to evict large encroachers in Munnar, he said. In reply to a question, Chandy explained that there was a vast difference between the Munnar and Wayanad issues. In Munnar, large land sharks had encroached on government property, while in Wayanad land had been occupied illegally by a group of tribals who belong to the ruling party.

The groups have taken law into their hands with scant respect to the rule of law, equality and justice, he said. In both cases, it was for the Government to act in a transparent manner, upholding the rule of law. As things stand now, the Government had failed on every count.

He said the governments concern for tribals and their right to land was bogus because it had failed to re-distribute land to landless tribals during the last four years it has been in power. Other than the land identified by the previous UDF government, the LDF Government had failed to identify even an inch of additional land to be given to the tribals. It had faltered in distributing the identified land, he said.

When asked what purpose an all-party meeting on Munnar would serve, Chandy said the opposition had extended its full support to the eviction operations. It had serious differences of opinion on the methods adopted by the government. We want an opportunity to present our views and this can be done only around a conference table, he said.

The government had failed to observe caution while taking action against the Tata group. Ministers one after the other proclaimed that stern action would be taken against the Tatas, which had constructed a check-dam in one of its tea estates in Munnar in violation of the lease agreement. But the Advocate General took a different stand when the issue came up in the High Court, Chandy said.

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