In a common affidavit opposing a batch of writ appeals by a group of villagers of Kaverirajapuram claiming a part of the parcels of land as belonging to their forefathers, State Revenue Secretary K Dhanavel has said that the claimants had no case.  In other words, the revenue secretary has made it clear that the land under dispute has been encroached upon, which is an indirect vindication of the charges levelled by the district administration.

In his affidavit filed in the Madras High Court on Thursday, the revenue secretary said the writ appeals “are not sustainable either in law or on the facts and circumstances of the case. A close scrutiny of the village accounts clearly establishes that the names of the appellants do not find a place in the village records,” he said.

Stating that all the lands in the specified survey numbers furnished by them are “anadeenam” (a type of ‘poromoboke’ land that have been abandoned for long years for non-payment of land tax), the official also found that lands mentioned in Neduparam, another nearby village, by the appellants “does not find place in the survey numbers.”
Hence the representation made by the villagers “is frivolous and totally false without proper right or claim to the land in question,” the revenue secretary said.

He also confirmed that the survey numbers of lands mentioned in these petitions “has been covered” in the Tiruvallur District Collector’s report to the Supreme Court Collegium (on the total extent of land allegedly encroached upon by Justice Dinakaran and his family).

The “factual details set out here (in the affidavit) regarding the lands in Kaverirajapuram will establish that the writ petitioners have no right over these lands,” the revenue secretary said, thus indirectly endorsing the correctness of the district collector’s earlier report on the extent of alleged encroachment of different types of “poromboke” lands in that village.

The revenue secretary also emphasised that the earlier single judge’s order in this case, dismissing the villagers’ petitions, was right, as both the Supreme Court and Parliament are seized of the issue.