Wayanad: The landless people who invaded the Harrison's Malayalam plantation at Thoverimala, near Sulthan Bathery, were busy constructing temporary sheds on Monday on the eve of elections.
Though the forest department personnel are camping at the site, they are not at all intervening.
DC learns they had received orders from above not to evict them until the voting is over.
The agitators under All India Revolutionary Kisan Sabha, the farmers' arm of CPI (ML) Red Star, and Adivasi Bharath Mahasabha, believe that they have legal right over the vested forest land taken over by the forest department. CPI (ML) Red Star central committee member M.P. Kunhikkanaran said they would broaden the agitation. "We have one person each from thousand families who will live in temporary sheds now," he said. "We'll start constructing huts for each family only after surveying and distributing land among encroachers."
Referring to the forest officials camping there, he said that they were intimidating them saying that it is forest land. But there are provisions for distributing vested forest land for the landless.
