With the cancellation of the land ownership of Joice George, MP, more cases related to land acquisition in the ecologically fragile land in Kottakambur village have come out.
Most of the major encroachments by those outside the district were done using power of attorney and it included those registered outside the district. A Chennai-registered company and many individuals from Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Malappuram also came up in the list of registrations mostly from 1999 to 2005.
The encroachments, however, continued till 2014, as per the list of registrations available with the Revenue Department. It is also suspected that many had forged the documents in benami names too.
The number of registrations using the power of attorney in a single day could prove the connivance of individuals who forged the documents to claim the ownership of the land.
A stern timely action was delayed as Kottakambur is in remote area where officials rarely visited. Moreover, there were some difficulties to ascertain the ownership of the lands as some of the plots were distributed under various schemes to the landless tribal people.
Some of the areas were also occupied by Tamil residents. Many plots of land distributed to the tribal people were abandoned finding it unfit for cultivation. There were also local leaders’ connivance in encroaching the land.
In the list of registrations using power of attorney included the name of a company owned by CPI(M) Perumbavoor municipal councillor John Jacob. The registration of the land was done at the Sub-Registrar office at Kuruppumpady in Ernakulam district.
The power of attorney was given by 13 Tamil residents as it were the plots of land owned by them and transferred the ownership in the name of Royal Agricultural Company in which Jacob is its managing director.