The Tata Tea management has strongly denied having encroached on the government land in the Munnar Hills but said it cannot cooperate with the new NRSA survey of the plantations ordered by the state government.
Tata Tea managing director Percy Siganporia explained the company’s position on Sunday at his first news meet convened ever since the controversy.
He said that Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company (KDHPCo) in which it has 18 per cent stake, had not even encroached upon “one acre of land’. What it held was 58741.82 acres of land vested with it legally.
An earlier survey conducted by the government had found that the company was actually short of 278.23 hectares.
Tata Tea said that the government’s decision to order a fresh survey of the plantations by the National Remote Sensing Agency was done with “malafide intentions”. This was because due process was not followed by the state government like informing them, one of the affected parties.
The LDF government led by Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan has been alleging for sometime that  the Tata Tea had encroached upon vast tracts of revenue land.
Mr Achuthanandan himself symbolically led the operation to “recover” the excess land by removing a Tata Tea nameboard. However, it later turned out that the land was already in the hands of the state forest department.
Not surprise
Mr Siganporia said he was not surprised as it followed the “pattern of behaviour of certain politicians for sometime now”.
Mr Siganporia also said the Tatas always followed the law of the land and wanted no confrontation with the government.