12 sanitary staff families to get land titles soon

CHENNAI: Paving an end to their 40-year struggle, 12 Adi Andhra (scheduled caste) families of permanent sanitary workers employed by the Sriperumbudur town panchayat will soon get land titles for the plots they are living on. The Kancheepuram district administration in a letter to an activist last week said the state revenue and disaster management on October 6 had communicated their approval and passed a decree to regularise the land and issue the land title (patta). The 12 families concerned will be given the titles (patta) online as per regulations, the letter issued by the Kancheepuram Adi Dravida and Tribal Welfare officer said. The families of the sanitary workers were brought from the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh more than 50 years ago, and put up on small plots of government-owned poramboke land which was then outside a village. Though multiple petitions to give them land titles had been filed with the state government since 1994, they were held up due to bureaucratic red tape. In fact, the local bodys elected council had passed a resolution twice - once in 2004 and later in 2013 - giving the families ownership of three cents of land in the Illaneer Kulam locality. One of the 12 current petitioners, A Gaja (53), was also mentioned in the 2004 resolution passed by the local body. After regular follow-up by a Sriperumbudur-based activist group Aran earlier this year, the Chief Ministers Office (CMO) had given a directive to the additional chief secretary of the revenue and disaster management department to take action. This was later forwarded to the district administration. TNIE has been highlighting the workers struggles with the district administration since July this year. Collector Kalaiselvi Mohan, in September, had assured that the land titles would be given soon, and in the meantime, the petitioners were being given all municipal facilities and that there was no impediment to their regular activities.