Farmers of Mondipatti panchayat in Srirangam, Chief
Minister Jayalalithaa’s constituency, are up in arms over the move to acquire
their land for the setting up of a paper board unit. The farmers argued that
the land identified for the State-owned project had been under cultivation for
three generations, and the livelihood of at least 2,000 families would be
affected if the government went ahead with the acquisition proposal.
The Rs. 1,200-crore multi-layer double-coated board
manufacturing unit is to be set up at Mondipatti village and the surrounding
dry areas by Tamil Nadu News Print and Papers Ltd (TNPL). The village is in
Manaparai taluk on the Kulithalai-Manapparai
National Highway
Ms. Jayalalithaa had announced the project in the
Assembly recently. Work on the unit, which will have a capacity of two lakh
tonnes per annum, will begin this year. Two thousand people will get direct and
indirect employment through the industry.
Farmers alleged that though more than 2,000 acres
of “unusable land” was available in Srirangam, officials had chosen for
acquisition the land that had been cultivated for three generations. They said
that, by acquiring 950 acres in Mondipatti, Poduvarpatti, Kottapatti, Vadugapatti
and Poongudipatti, 300 acres of paddy, 250 acres of sugarcane, apart from 300
acres of other crops and 10,000 coconut trees and mango trees and 175 bedrock
wells and a number of bore wells would be lost. It would affect the livelihood
of at least 2,000 families.
They alleged it was a “conspiracy” by officials to
help “real estate sharks” who had purchased lands in the vicinity of the
proposed area for the paper board unit. Farmers said that, they are certain
that the Chief Minister, who supports the farming community in its fight
against the laying of pipelines by GAIL and has declared that she will not
allow any agricultural land to be affected, is not even aware that the planned
acquisition will affect fertile land. There is no public hearing or
notification for the land acquisition. We came to know of the plan only a few
days ahead of the announcement in the Assembly and officials are trying to
persuade us to sign on dotted lines. They are planning an agitation in front of
the Manapparai Taluk office. Though the land acquisition notification was yet
to be issued, survey of the villages had been going on for the past few months.
District officials remained tight-lipped about the project and the land
acquisition process.
What Jayalalithaa is going
to do for this?
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