Greedy men grabbing poromboke land in violation of social justice: HC
Special government pleader A Selvendran submitted that though the petitioner was in occupation of grama natham land, it was reclassified as government land.
Madras High Court
CHENNAI: Holding that persons with money power, muscle power and political power alone would be in a position to occupy grama natham lands to a larger extent for exploitation and for unjust gains, the Madras High Court refused to set aside a judgment directing the State to evict a private individual from the land.
Larger extent of lands across Tamil Nadu are grabbed by private individuals and by greedy men under the pretext that they were grama natham lands. This is unconstitutional and in violation of the constitutional mandate of social justice,” wrote a division bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and K Rajasekar.
An appellant, S Anbananthan, moved the HC seeking to set aside a single judge order directing the State to evict him from a grama natham land in Kurumbalur village, Perambalur. The appellant had submitted that he had been in possession of the land for 40 years and also submitted certain judgments to prove that the grama natham lands did not vest with the government.
Special government pleader A Selvendran submitted that though the petitioner was in occupation of grama natham land, it was reclassified as government land. “The land was already allotted to the survey department for construction of the survey office and for staff quarters,” he added.
But the judges ruled that land grabbers found a safe passage for grabbing the public lands under the guise of grama natham land.
“If the anomalous situation is allowed to continue, then the government may not get lands for public purposes in future,” read the judgment. “On account of skyrocketing of market value of lands, people are tempted to grab lands one way or the other, even by creating fraudulent documents and by tampering revenue records. The government officials are also colluding and tampering the revenue records through corrupt activities.”
The bench dismissed the appeal adding that the State must ensure that the lands including grama natham poromboke lands are distributed to serve the common good and “the equal distribution of land to the landless poor people is the mandate. Therefore, the larger extent of such grama natham poromboke cannot be claimed by any individuals for commercial exploitation or their personal gains”.