The Zero landless scheme, Kerala’s Congress-led Government’s flagship populist programme of distributing to poor families three cents of land each to live on in a bid to make the State a place without landless people, has turned out to be a political gimmick designed to betray the beneficiaries.
The Government’s insincerity behind the programme became clear even before 20 days were out since its launch. The scheme was launched on September 30 by Congress president Sonia Gandhi but several of the lands thus distributed were mired in controversies related to ownership or already owned by other people.
The possible fraudulent intentions behind the scheme came out within days of Sonia’s departure after inaugurating it after the State-owned Kerala Water Authority wrote to the State Revenue Department saying that, the lands assigned to ten or more people in the Vellanad village of Thiruvananthapuram, were under its ownership and that it could not be allotted to others.
As there were no documents in the possession of the Revenue Department to prove otherwise, the only option available to it was to ask the beneficiaries who had already been allotted the lands to surrender their Pattas (title deeds).
Many beneficiaries said that they did not know the exact place where they were allotted the lands but claimed that the department took back their title deeds without specifying any reason. “It now seems that what we were given were some worthless papers and not land,” said a beneficiary.
The Thiruvananthapuram district collector said that steps would be taken to return the title deeds to the beneficiaries, the department still has no idea about where they could be given land from and when it could be distributed again. The department has not yet identified any land for these people.
As per the original plan, the Government headed by Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy was to allot three cents of land each to 233,232 landless families but it was unable to identify the land needed for this. The problems in the availability of sufficient land had forced the Government to implement the programme in phases.
The first phase of the programme was to start in August but this got delayed as the person to inaugurate it, Sonia Gandhi, had to undergo treatment abroad. Sonia arrived in Kerala on a two-day visit on September 29, mainly to assess the situation of the faction war in the State Congress, but inaugurated the scheme on September 30 by distributing documents to six beneficiaries.
Revenue Department sources admitted that discrepancies could be found in other places too as lands were acquired in a hurry possibly because of the Government’s political compulsions in a situation where it was facing Opposition onslaught in the infamous solar scam.
