New twist to Dinakaran issue

Two revenue officials say Karnataka CJI prevented them from discharging duty

Now, the district administration is looking into complaints by two high-level Revenue Department officials against the judge allegedly attempting to ‘prevent’ them from discharging their official duties.

The Tiruvallur district administration, within which the judge’s native village of Kaverirajapuram falls, is ‘perusing’ two complaints against the judge, who allegedly “threatened the officials over phone” on Saturday, when they had rushed to the village to stop attempts at removing the fencing on the land encroachments there.
The Tiruttani tahsildar and the revenue divisional officer had on Saturday evening complained to the Collector, stating that the Karnataka High Court Chief Justice had allegedly “warned them of criminal action”, over phone through the latter’s local representative, if they (officials) sought to enter his priavte lands in that village without his prior permission, one of the aggrieved officials told Deccan Herald on Sunday. 

The problem is about 200 acres of ‘Poromboke’ (Government) lands, that come “in between and adjacent to the vast ‘patta’ (private) lands of the Honourable Judge,” the official said.

“We got a message that the fencing he (the Judge) has done (marking off the lands allegedly encroached upon over a period of time) was suddenly being removed. It was on the Collector’s instructions we rushed to the area with a posse of policemen and other officials to stop it,” the official said, without wishing to be named.
But it was then that two of the officials’ team were handed a cellphone to ‘speak’ to the Judge who was purportedly at the other end, the source said. “We could not proceed with our duty; we had to return in the middle leaving our work unfinished; hence we decided to give the complaints to the District Collector,” the official said.

Negating findings
Only a few days earlier, the Tiruvallur district administration, on a directive from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to the Tamil Nadu Government, had sent the details of Justice P D Dinakaran’s land holdings and extent of encroachment on ‘vast area’ of Government lands at Kaverirajapuram in the district, the official said, adding, “it would not be proper for the district administration to reveal the details.”
In this backdrop, the villagers, most of whom are Dalits, felt that the alleged attempts to remove the fencing now by the Judge’s local representative on the ‘encroached lands’ could be to ‘negate’ the details furnished by the Thiruvallur district administration to the Supreme Court.
However, there was no action on the ground in Kaverirajapuram till Sunday noon, the source added.