Land-grab charge against PC's wife, son

A fishermen’s association on Monday accused Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s wife Nalini and son Karti P Chidambaram of grabbing land near the coastal village of Muttukadu near here. The two denied the charges.

Several fishermen from the Karikattu Kuppam hamlet near Muttukadu, about 30 km from the city, on way to the famous tourist resort of Mamallapuram, gave a complaint addressed to the Chennai police commissioner at his office, alleging that some four acres of “poramboke” (government)” land adjacent to about five acres belonging to the Chidambaram family there had been “grabbed” by the duo, denying access to a path-way and fish-drying land of local fisherfolk.

The complaint also alleged that members of the Chidambaram family named in the petition had also built a “huge 20 feet wall” encircling the ““poramboke” land and urged Police Commissioner J K Tripathy to retrieve the encroached land for use by the local fisherfolk. Sources told Deccan Herald that a complaint against Nalini and Karti had been handed over to the police.

Complaints of land grabbing by politicians  have been pouring in since the AIADMK led by J Jayalalitha returned to office in Tamil Nadu last year. Chief Minister J Jayalalitha had set up a special cell in each district to receive such complaints, investigate them and ensure that encroached land was returned to its rightful owners.

N R R Arun Natarajan, lawyer for Karti P Chidambaram, denied the charge against his clients. Natarajan later met the police commissioner and explained his client’s position, stating that about five acres, adjacent to the “impugned” government land, was a bona fide piece of land purchase by the members of the Chidambaram family in 1991.

“This is a false complaint; my clients have been in uninterrupted possession of the ‘patta’ land since then; the sale deed and all the documents are there,” Natarajan said.

“There is no question of any land grab.” He said that after the December 2004 tsunami, “on land adjacent to my clients ‘patta’ land, the state had built one-room tenements to the affected fisherfolk. But later they resorted to ‘open defecation’ on the “patta” land, forcing its owners to erect a fence and then a wall when the fence was torn down.”