Tale of the man who burned the village office

Thiruvananthapuram: The man who set fire to village office at Vellarada in Thiruvananthapuram district in April has a story of official apathy and lack of diligence to tell.

Samkutty, who committed the crime, had 7.29 are land in Vellarada village of Nettinkara taluk which he received from his father through a transfer deed.

He had been remitting land tax for the land till 1991. However, on resurvey, his land was marked as government land. Though he filed complaints, he was not allowed to remit the taxes.

When he approached the survey adalat, the village office, in fact, had stated the facts of the case in his report to the Tahsildar in May 2012. It was stated that Mr. Samkutty was the legal owner of the land before the resurvey though now marked as government land in the records. However, he did not get any relief.

So, he approached the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy at his mass contact programme with a petition. His petition was initially forwarded to the Collector of Pathanamthitta, where he was residing, in March last year though his petition was about his land in Thiruvananthapuram district.

The petition subsequently reached the Collector of Thiruvananthapuram. The response that Mr. Samkutty received said that his petition had been considered by the Chief Minister and the Screening Committee headed by the Minister in charge.

The decision was that the he would be included as a beneficiary of Zero Landless Project (scheme of the government to provide land to the poor) and assigned land as per availability and subject to guidelines.

He presented the order at the village office not knowing that the order was not one for rectifying the error in the resurvey records or directing the village officer to accept tax on his land. The village office sat on the file as the order was not related to the case.

Mr. Samkutty had been running from pillar to post for getting the village office to accept the tax on his land. Frustrated and in anger, he set fire to village office to teach the officials there a lesson! Now, he is being prosecuted for arson.

Update: (25-7-2016): After an enquiry, Revenue Minister E. Chandrasekharan has directed revenue officials to effect the transfer of registry of Samkutty's land. Though officials initially reported that the land in question was revenue puramboke, the Minister dd not accept it. Now, the taluk authorities are taking steps for mutation.