Madurai-based NGO Evidence has urged the State government to withdraw attempts to evict the Scheduled Caste residents of Samalapuram village near Palladam in Tiruppur district and take steps to issue pattas to the residents.
In a statement issued on Friday, Executive Director of Evidence A. Kathir said that a fact-finding team from the NGO visited Samalapuram on March 14, two weeks after the Water Resources Department on March 1 sent a notice to 135 families claiming that they had encroached on the banks of the Samalapuram tank and that the encroachments must be removed.
“There is a large gap between the banks of the waterbody and where the Dalit people reside. Moreover, they have constructed their houses till the main road. They have been residing here for nearly 100 years,” Mr. Kathir said based on the findings of the team. The SC residents possessed necessary government documents such as ration cards and voter identity cards and they had neither been affected by the Samalapuram tank nor damaged the waterbody, he added.
Citing the Supreme Court’s judgment in the 2011 ‘Jagpal Singh and Others versus State of Punjab’ case, he asserted that governments cannot retrieve lands from landless labourers and members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
In its recommendations, Evidence said that the District Collector must conduct a grievance redress meet for the SC residents at Samalapuram and provide basic amenities to them. The State government must also issue an order to hand over lands to members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who had been staying on government-owned lands for a minimum of 20 years or those who had been regularly paying their taxes to the State government, the statement added.
On Friday, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led by Coimbatore MP P.R. Natarajan staged a demonstration outside the District Collectorate in Tiruppur condemning the eviction attempts in Samalapuram and demanding pattas for the SC residents.
