By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has called a high-level meeting tomorrow of revenue and legal officers to discuss the fallout of a high court verdict against demolitions in the tourism hotspot of Munnar.
Scores of buildings accommodating tourists in the hill station were razed in the much-publicized drive initiated by his predecessor V S Achuthanandan in 2007, saying they were built illegally on government land.
However, the office complexes of his Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and its key ally Communist Party of India (CPI), partially leased out to the hospitality industry, were spared under political pressure.
Last week, a bench headed by the state’s Chief Justice, Manjula Chellur, ruled that the action was illegal and asked the state government to pay a compensation to one of the petitioners whose resort was demolished by a special squad of police and civil officials that he sent.
The government fears the verdict to put a huge burden on the state’s exchequer as it has cleared the decks for all the 92 evictees to move the lower court, which is looking into their petitions, and earn favourable verdict.
“The large scale destructions in Munnar was wrong and I still hold my view that they could have taken possession of whatever structures illegally constructed,” said Adoor Prakash, the revenue minister of the state where the hospitality industry grows by around 10%.
Tomorrow’s meeting to be held in the port city of Kochi will decide if the state should challenge the verdict in the country’s supreme court as demanded by Achuthanandan, who is also preparing to approach the apex court.
“These structures were built spending tens of millions of rupees and there was a undue haste to demolish them though the government had every right to take them over. That was my view during the demolition process and I still stand by it,” Prakash added.
The court directed the state government to give back possession of ‘resumed’ land to the respective owners and pay them compensation. The use of force to demolish structures was an abuse of power, it ruled.
During the demolition spree that lasted for two months, the team “reclaimed” 16,000 acres of land and pulled down 92 “illegal” buildings giving a huge boost to Achuthanandan’s image as ‘demolition man’.
The court directed the state government to restore the land and pay a provisional compensation of Rs1mn to Cloud9 Resorts that lost 11 buildings in Munnar, rated as the second best holiday destination by TripAdvisor in 2010.
The court said the entire proceedings initiated to take over the land were bad in law and that the right to property was constitutional and legal and it could not be taken away by the ‘‘abuse of power” which “should be curbed and compensated”.
In a statement, Achuthanandan said the judgment after eight months since the arguments were completed was mysterious, especially as it came after the chief justice received a transfer order to Calcutta High Court.
“This judgement is in favour of the encroachers,” he said. “As many as 125 writ petitions were filed in the court during the eviction process. No verdict was passed against the government in any of these cases and it refused to intervene”.
Reacting to Achuthanandan’s demand, the chief minister said the state government would take further action only after studying verdict in detail and he would not make any hasty step for popular applause.
“The government will take appropriate action after studying the verdict in detail.
We will also examine the procedural lapses in the eviction process (pointed out by the court),” Chandy said. “It is not a fair practice to criticise the judge when the verdict goes against and hail when it is favourable. We respect the verdict”.
A view of one of the sight-seeing spots set up for tourists.
