Close on the heels of the tiff with Tata Tea, it is RPG group’s Harrison Malayalam plantation that’s facing the grim end of LDF government’s anti-encroachment machinery now. Harrison Malayalam is India’s largest rubber plantation-owner and second major tea planter in south India.
A ministerial sub-committee that met here on Tuesday, has decided to reclaim the `excess land illegally in possession’ of the RPG group company.
The Cabinet panel’s final report will be wrapped up by October 17. The modus operandi on reclaiming the land is yet to be evolved, sources said.
“It is a unilateral move,” said V Venugopal, solicitor, Harrison Malayalam Plantations, when contacted.
“We have not been heard. There was not even a gesture of serving a notice, when the State government took over 22.45 hectres in Thrissur,” he told FE.
The company’s contention is that, out of the 59,000-odd acres it commands in Kerala, just 6,063 acres is on lease from the Kerala government.
The LDF government was bullodozed to the decision of constituting a Cabinet panel to look into Harrison Malayalam issue, following Congress-led UDF raising a mele over it in the Assembly. According to Congress legistaur VD Satheesan, Harrison Malayalam had colluded with the state forest ministry, encroaching upon 25,000 acres. The LDF government is now on pressure to brush itself off collusion charges.
Recently, the Kerala government had reclaimed some of the land in Thrissur. The company takes exception to the charge that it had sub-leased the rubber area for farming plantain and pineapple. “It was intercropping on rubber fallow land that was mistaken as sub-leasing,” claims Venugopal.
A detailed report earlier submitted by Nivedita Haran (revenue principal secretary, Kerala) had observed that in five districts, Harrison Malayalam was holding land in excess of that it had leased from the State government.
“We will make a move only with proper legal ammunition,” says M Vijayakumar, state law minister. With the anti-encroachment mood gaining popularity, the LDF government has no go now but to train guns at its latest plantation adversary.