The National Green Tribunal has flayed the state government for its inability to crack down on the construction mafia blatantly grabbing land in eco-sensitive Munnar. The Left government is accused of being hand in glove with the builder lobby

 ~By Naveen Nair in Thiruvananthapuram

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) seems to have finally lost its patience over the issue of land encroachments in Munnar, the scenic hill resort in Kerala. A suo motu notice has been filed against the Kerala government by the tribunal vis-a-vis the commitments the state made in October 2015 to evict illegal encroachments and constructions. The tribunal also wanted an action taken report on the steps the Kerala government had promised to take to restore Munnar back to environmental normalcy and free it from construction clutter.

Though the NGT had in 2015 given the state government the mandate to step in and act against the land and resort mafia that had encroached land, the authorities in this southern state seem to have been sleeping on the order. In fact, whatever action was initiated by the revenue and district authorities came to a halt due to extreme political pressure. It was the relentless media reporting on the sluggishness of the government that seems to have prompted the tribunal to finally act.

“It will be a disaster if a place like Munnar is pushed into becoming something like Delhi or Mumbai….You have all the powers to act and if anyone stands in between, they may be prosecuted for trying to obstruct duty,’’ observed the Tribunal.

The latest NGT order places on notice the state chief secretary, the district collector of Idukki, the sub-collector and tahsildar of Devikulam, the Munnar gram panchayat, the executive engineer of the national highways, The state electricity board, the department of geology and mining and the state pollution control board. All these officials/departments have been asked to furnish their reports on the progress of the eviction drive at the hill station undertaken since 2015.

The immediate provocation for the NGT to crack the whip apparently came from a revelation in a national daily by the land revenue commissioner, Munnar. He pointed out the inability of the state revenue department and other agencies to act against the encroachers in the face of stiff opposition from local leaders of the ruling CPI led by its state power minister from Idukki, MM Mani.

Activists who had been hoping for a renewed intervention from the NGT are now optimistic. “Let us hope that the NGT’s intervention will give the much-needed teeth for the officials to act against those who are encroaching land on a mass scale in Munnar. Now the government will have to be much more accountable,’’ Harish Vasudevan, an environmental activist and lawyer told India Legal.

It was a little-known NGO, the Munnar Restoration Society, that first took the Munnar issue to the NGT. The Tribunal’s October 2015 order had directed the state government to take steps to protect the deteriorating eco system in Munnar. The government filed an affidavit which had made the Devikulam sub-collector as the nodal officer for the eviction work at Munnar.

A few months ago, the same sub collector Sriram Venkitaraman was heckled and abused by the local leaders of the CPM for stepping up operations in Munnar. Without doubt, the NGT has suo motu taken cognizance of the events that unfolded in Munnar over the last few months.

There is also the line of argument which believes that the NGT may have lost its confidence in the state government’s will to act in Munnar. This is because the Munnar Mission 2—as it is now known after the much-hyped first attempt in 2007 failed—is all but a damp squib.

Though E Chandrasekharan, the revenue minister, has expressed his commitment towards saving Munnar, the general consensus is that the government is not giving him a free hand. The minister is from the CPI, the junior partner in the CPM-led Left Front government, and is being restrained from taking action by big-wigs in the CPM and in the government.

The CPM has its own compulsions to ensure that the encroachers are not acted against. Reason: many in the party are hand in glove with the big resort owners and land grabbers. For instance, MM Mani’s younger brother MM Lambodaran is among the top encroachers in the area. He has grabbed 250 acres in the Chinnakanal area of Munnar and figures prominently in the list of land grabbers that the revenue department has drawn up.

Any action against Lambodaran will invite the ire of the party because hurting him would mean hurting his brother, MM Mani,which would cause much collateral damage to the CPM in Idukki district, an important stronghold for the Left given the sizeable vote-bank among the tea garden workers and farmers.

Moreover, it is an open secret that Mani, who was inducted into the cabinet at the behest of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is not only his trusted lieutenant but also the CPM’s point person when it comes to raising funds. For obvious reasons Mani’s proximity to the CM and his links with the resort and real estate lobby in Munnar is something that comes in the way of action being taken. Activists in Munnar say the ruling party’s vested interest is what is destroying Munnar. “To act strongly in Munnar you need political will. But the government does not have it because the ruling party itself is reaping benefits of the encroachment and the illegal constructions here,’’ says Manoj Nair, a social activist based in Munnar.

The Green Tribunal bench, comprising Justice P Jyothimani and the expert member Professor R Nagendran, had come down heavily on various departments of the state government for not implementing its 2015 orders in which the state government had agreed to act on several counts. The Tribunal is particularly upset with the state electricity board which had in 2015 promised it would cut the power supply to all illegal constructions.

The NGT also asked the state pollution control board on what sewage plans are in place for Munnar. It said it did not have any as only 30 percent of  Kerala had a sewage plan. The Tribunal expressed shock at this and directed it to get its act together in dealing with Munnar immediately.

A visibly frustrated Tribunal then asked the government to file a progress report by May 29 on what it had done since 2015. Here are some of the key commitments the government had made to the NGT then: non-issuance of No Objection Certificates for constructions meant for commercial purposes; asking the state electricity board not to give power connections to those without NOC and ensuring that all illegal and unauthorised constructions and check dams are demolished.

Munnar is an important tourist destination in Kerala and is also home to a number of flora and fauna that come under the endangered category. But rampant encroachments upon government and forest land over the last three decades have reduced Munnar into a concrete jungle and severely strained its fragile ecosystem. One hopes that the NGT’s wakeup call will finally goad the state government into taking action.