what your government can do to you

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The following is a plea I have written to the Lieutenant Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. I have not yet received a reply. He is not in the islands. Nor are his advisors or personal secretary anywhere near him. The Chief Secretary and Revenue Secretary have been given orders by him to travel across the islands between the 12^th and the 14^th of October. The High Court is closed on the 12^th, which is the date I am expected to vacate a land that has come to become part of our family. I sit here helpless. No amount of hard work, or acquired skill can help me in a land rendered lawless by its own government.

A land I have grown up on, a land that has possibly played a very large role in making me the person I am today, is being snatched away from me without giving me the opportunity or the right to even fight for it. The Administration has tired of trying to acquire it from us through legal means, unsuccessfully, so now they have reverted to a most devious plan. The Administration. The Government. The System. I am just a person.

Is there anybody who can help us?

Subj.: Urgent: An unlawful activity carried out in your name



Dear Sir,



I sincerely hope this letter finds you well even through these trying times. Please forgive me for getting straight to the point but my family has been awarded no time for niceties.



This letter comes in the wake of an eviction notice (attached) that has been issued to us on Friday the 9^th of October, 2015, evening at 1900 hrs. This notice has given us three days to vacate the premises including Monday, which is a holiday for the Courts, Saturday and Sunday. The High Court will not be sitting on either of these three days.



The order has clearly stated your approval of the eviction. But I doubt if you are aware of the method they are implementing to take possession from us, given that they have asked us to vacate the premises by the 12^th of October, even though it is common knowledge that the court will not be sitting on either 10^th, 11^th or 12^th of October as 10^th and 11^th are Saturday and Sunday and the 12^th is a High Court holiday from Calcutta. Hence, under the garb of your approval and consent they are taking away our fundamental right to fight this in a legal manner in a Court of Law where it can be justly decided whether or not the said order must be enforced. I simply refuse to believe that you could have approved of such an unjust method to take possession over a land that has been with our family for 30 years.



Kindly note, Sir, that even though the Notice states that an Order dated 8^th October was served to us before the arrival of the Notice, the truth is that the Order was only delivered to us after the Notice at 1900 hrs on Friday the 9th of October, hence giving us no time at all to engage in legal measures on the same day.



This letter is an appeal not to stop the eviction process, but to go about it in a lawful manner, awarding us with reasonable time to at least file an appeal in a Court of Law. I request that three working days starting from the 13^th of October, 2015, kindly be given to us thereby granting at least our country’s Court of Law sufficient time to decide whether or not we must be immediately evicted from the premises.



Our fear is that Police protection will be awarded to the Tehsildar to physically remove us from our property without a proper hearing. Sir, I am left with no other option but to appeal to you as this is being carried out in your name under the garb of your approval and if the police physically evict us despite bringing the matter to your notice, we will be left with no option but to approach the press and reveal the grave injustice of the matter to them in entirety with whatever evidence we may have in support of our claims.



Please Sir, I request you to only grant us three working days as sufficient time to carry out our right to a fair trial in a lawful manner.



Sincerely,



Tanaz K. Noble



[phone]



P.S.: Please Find attached is a copy of the said eviction Notice.



A brief background to this land:

In 1986 my father purchased a barren land, comprising of undergrowth, and surrounded by marsh, occasionally even guarded by a crocodile. My mother fondly recalls the ‘surprise’ my father excitedly wished to show her in 1984. She wore her best heels with her matching pencil skirt and left excitedly with my father who, in turn, should have told her to wear what he was wearing: full pants, long-sleeved shirt and a hat, with, of course, water-friendly anti-skid shoes. She would learn.

The two birds flew off on their new Chetak scooter to the house of a very courteous and rather silent Sardar – surprisingly rare, but surely not ‘the’ surprise. So she followed; followed the surprisingly silent sardar with his menacing talwar through a forest; a forest which she most certainly could not have made it through alone or without the Sardar’s talwar as he hacked continuously at undergrowth that seemed to grow back faster than they could cross it; and to cross it they took two hours of walking…in her favourite heels… clearly not her favourite any more.

By the time they had reached the edge of the forest, the three looked like they had taken a long uncomfortable swim in their own sweat, and she was certain she was high on the excessive oxygen she had been breathing in for the past couple of hours from “so many trees!!!” as she puts it.

A tiny and “rather cute” boat was waiting for them at the edge of the tree-line. The talwared sardar motioned for her to enter the boat, so she did. My father, the boatman, and the sardar rolled up their pants and started to push the boat away from the forest. The weight of their sinking feet made black water ooze from the gooey soil with each step. Soon they were in enough water to float the boat, and as she continued to stare, digesting the events so far, the boatman shoved a tiny cut-up paint bucket into her hands and pointed at the water quickly filling into the boat motioning for her to start emptying it out. And she did; non-stop! “But the water level just wouldn’t reduce!!!” she recalls. The three men rowed as hard as they could while she emptied the water from the filling boat as fast as she could until everyone was moaning and sweating and grimacing and they felt the boat touch bottom. The boatman jumped out and began to push it, then joined in the sardar, my father turning his grimace into a satisfied smile. They stopped; it was time to disembark. He leapt out after her, beaming from ear to ear, and screamed, ”SURPRISE!!!” with his arms spread wide, and as she looked around she wondered if he was referring to the knee-deep marsh that she stood in or the adventure they had just survived – little knowing, that the real surprise was the adventure she was yet to experience in years to come.

Behind him, stood silently a twenty-five acre neglected anemic-looking land that the silent sardar had purchased in an auction from the administration in 1973. Later that evening, in the comfort of the sardar’s wife’s Bata chappals, my mother went over the sale certificate and Khatauni slip that the Revenue Department had issued to the sardar “’confirmed by the Deputy Commissioner,’ – that’s what the sale certificate reads. See,” she shows me, “…Free from all encumbrances imposed on and grants and contracts made in respect of it by any person other than the purchaser”, it further read. Showing the nature of tenancy as “Occupancy Rights”, which in lay-man terms, means “Ownership”.

“Why are you selling it?” she asked, “You have seen how difficult it is just to approach the land. I neither have the physical nor the financial strength to do anything with it,” replied the sardar, and although it was a satisfactory response, she found herself troubled by her inability to remember whether or not that was the first time she had actually heard him speak. Anyway. “And why do you wish to buy this?” she asked my father, who was perusing the papers, “Where else in the world will we get to own an Island?”

In April ’86, after the Revenue Department mutated ownership from the Sardar to my father, proudly holding his sale certificate he decided his next gift to my mother: “Let’s build a jetty!” She agreed, not knowing, that while he had to be away on the ship, earning to pay for the construction of the jetty, it was she who would have to have it built. Standing there, hands on her hips, yelling at men unused to taking orders from a woman she refused to replace her skirts for pants. Some old-timers still inform me that she was the first woman in these islands to drive a car! “And she did it in a skirt!!!” they recall.

In 1992, on completion of the jetty, the first case was filed against them by the Assistant Commissioner on grounds of illegal construction. My father challenged the order in the High Court and a judgement was passed in his favour, allowing him the right to an approach.

In 1994, a Valuation Certificate signed and sealed by the Government of India’s Ministry of finance continued to state the ownership of the land and the constructions on it as “Occupancy Rights” – as did every department, including the Assistant Commissioner, until a notice was issued to my father asking him to show cause why he should not be evicted from his land.

Since then, there have been four writ petitions filed against us by the administration trying to evict us from our land. And we have won them. The cases have been passed on not only to the next generation of owners but also lawyer. Both originals having passed away.

The last most recent order passed by the divisional bench on 06.02.2014 states:

“Since it is the undeniable position at this stage that there is no material in support of the Administration’s assertion that a limited grant was made in favour of the Chouldari Cooperative Coconut farming Society, the order of the Deputy Commissioner passed on February 22, 2007 cannot be sustained. Accordingly, that said order is set aside as being without any material in support thereof.

However, since the Administration insists that there was a mistake, the Administration is permitted a time for eighteen months from the date hereof to initiate any fresh process in accordance with law for the resumption of the land now in possession of the petitioner, upon relying on cogent material thereof. Copies of all documents and material should be made available to the petitioners in the event any proceedings for resumption are to be initiated by the Administration.”



After a number of hearings with the Deputy Commissioner that abruptly ended on the 20^th of August, we were magically presented with an eviction notice received by us at 7:00 pm on the 9^th of October 2015 instructing us to vacate the possession of the land by the 12^th, failing which the possession will be taken over by the Tehsildar, Ferrargunj without any further notice.

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Comments

[Harish]

Good luck
Good luck with the fight, hope it all works out well. Lemme know if I can do anything to help

[Gunjan Mathur]

Hope the Lieutenant Governor replied to your letter
Dear Tanaz I just came across your blog while reading about your night kayak trips. Your plea to the Governer is really moving and I hope soo very much that you got a timely reply. Wish you loads of energy and patience for your fight against injustice. Good luck! Best Gunjan

[tanaz]

Thank you.
Hi Gunjan, thank you so much, but no, the LG never did respond. They came, locked up the place, put their signboards up and just claimed ownership overnight. of course, the high court single and divisional bench ruled in our favour, but they they have appealed in the Supreme Court where the case has been sitting for the past year and a half. The judges even mentioned in their order that what the administration is doing is nothing more than harassment. But what do they care, they're not paying to keep the case going. to harass us. We pay their side we pay our side; and then we wait...for justice? how? How could i be given what the courts call justice after we have been bled dry. Bled dry of patience, of endurance, of money, of hope, of belief; at the rate our courts are going, by the time they finally deliver their version of justice there may be nothing left of us but empty, emotion-less shells. This case has killed one generation already; not only of owner but also lawyer. Let's see how many generations it takes for 'justice'.