There will be no loss of land due to forest buffer zone: Pinarayi Vijayan

Kerala Chief Minister accuses ‘vested political interests’ of misleading the public by falsely blaming LDF government over the survey

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday assured people living on the extremities of protected forests spread across 115 densely populated panchayats in the State that they would not lose their land or livelihood to the Supreme Court-suggested one-kilometre buffer zone around ecologically sensitive localities (ESZ).

At a press conference here, Mr. Vijayan accused “vested political interests” of misleading the public by falsely blaming the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government for “arbitrarily ordering a satellite survey to demarcate the proposed no-human habitation zone to the detriment of thousands of settler farmers”.

He said the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) opposition, with a mischievous eye on turning the affected population against the LDF, eclipsed that the Supreme Court ordered the contentious survey.

Mr. Vijayan said the public genuinely worried the survey glossed over hundreds of spartan homes, large swathes of cultivated land, public and commercial buildings and subsistence structures, chiefly mud and thatched constructions.

He said the government published the survey report so the affected families could flag the anomalies in the survey and help the government incorporate the overlooked details in its final report to the court to bolster the State’s case for a total exemption of human habitats from the intended ESZ.

Mr. Vijayan noted that forests covered nearly 34% of the densely populated State’s geographical area. The Arabian Sea bounded the State on one side and the Western Ghats (48% of Kerala’s land mass) on the other. Inhabitable land was at a premium in the State.

Mr. Vijayan deflected the blame on the Congress for precipitating the situation. He said Congress leader and former Union Minister for Forests and Environment Jairam Ramesh was bullish about establishing a 10-km wide ESZ around forests. Several Congress persons, including Opposition Leader V. D. Satheeshan, backed the “thoughtless” move.