THOUSANDS of people marched towards the RDO office situated in Kallakurichi, in Villupuram district in the morning on June 17. They were all tribal people. They were from the Kalvarayan Hills, an important tribal centre in Tamilnadu.

Recently, one fine morning the department of forests of government of Tamilnadu had given a very big shock to the tribal people of Kalvarayan Hills. The department released a notification that the 13,000 acres of land, which are in the hands of the people under cultivation for a long period, would be converted as ‘reserved forests’. If this announcement of the government will be implemented, the lives of the entire Kalvarayan tribals will be shattered.

So, the Tamilnadu Tribal Association and Tamilnadu Kisan Sabha have decided to protest until the notification is withdrawn. Responding to the decision, tribal people from every village of the Hills marched towards Kallakurichi and laid a siege to the RDO office.

P Shanmugam, general secretary of TNKS and president of the Tribal association, who led the struggle, said that the notification of the forest department is totally against the Forest Rights Act 2006. The people of Kalvarayan Hills have been living here and cultivating the land for more than a hundred years. Therefore, Shanmugam demanded that the government should give pattas for the land to the tribal people. Due to the illegal notification of the forest department, road laying work as well as other PWD works for the tribal villages have stopped since the past one month, he said.

Led by P Shanmugam, Tribal Association leaders S Palanisamy, P Sinnasamy, CPI(M) state committee member G Anandhan and Villupuram district secretary T Ezhumalai and others, the tribals holding red flags in their hands marched in the rally in the town of Kallakurichi.

After a while, government officials held talks with the leaders. They agreed to recommend to the district collector to scrap the notification which changes the lands under cultivation into ‘reserved forests’ and said that until the notification is scrapped, status quo would be maintained. The officials also agreed to instruct the forest officers to not enter the lands of the tribals and to not threaten the people.

This is an immediate victory of the powerful protest of the tribal people. However, P Shanmugam warned that if the officials do not act on what they have said, they will face more militant struggles.