Kasaragod: Laxmi, 92, frail and confined to bed, received an eviction notice from the Kasaragod land revenue (LR) tahsildar on July 5. It ordered her to vacate the crumbling two-room home her family has been living in for over 90 years, and shift to another plot in just three days. Strangely, the notice mentioned only a vague survey number of the plot to which Laxmi and her six-member family should shift, and not the address.
Without knowing where to go, Laxmi and her six-member family stayed put, as they had through five decades of legal battles, fighting for their right as ‘kudikidappukaran’ – lawful homestead settlers protected under the Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963. When contacted, Kasaragod’s principal tahsildar admitted the notice was issued to comply with an interim order from the Kerala High Court Division Bench, which directed the government to relocate the family before the next hearing on July 10.
“Legally, they (Laxmi’s family) have a right to the plot. They have been living there for around 90 years,” the official said, and added their plight is as heartbreaking as the house they live in. But for Laxmi’s family- members of the Malayan Scheduled Tribe community- the house is both a graveyard of grief and a fortress of quiet resistance.
Laxmi’s homestead sits on a 23-cent plot along Nayak’s Road in the heart of Kasaragod town. The land also shelters shrines to three family deities: Karinkutty Sasthappan, Pottan Theyyam, and Vishnu Murthy Theyyam. “We’re only asking for 10 cents out of the 23 — the portion where our house and the shrine stand,” said Laxmi’s daughter Kamalakshi.
The case has become yet another long-drawn battle under the Kerala Land Reforms Act. Laxmi’s occupancy is being challenged by 80-year-old K A Vasu, who runs a tyre retreading and puncture shop on MG Road, and his sister Sulochana, children of the late Koraga, the property’s original owner. With recent land transactions in the area fetching up to ₹19 lakh per cent, the stakes have sharply risen: for Laxmi’s family, it is about memory and survival; for the legal owners, it is about reclaiming the ancestral land.
Inside the dimly lit house, where a tarpaulin sheet holds the tiled roof together, three speckless photographs hang side by side on a faded wall. Beneath them, names and death dates:
K Gangadharan, April 7, 2003.
K Surendran, April 7, 2003.
K Kamalakshan, April 17, 2003.
K Gangadharan, K Surendran, K Kamalakshan. Photo: Special arrangement
They were Laxmi’s only sons, all three killed in a road accident. “That day, three men came home and insisted on being dropped at the new bus stand just 500 metres away. But they took my brothers to Manjeshwar,” said Kamalakshi, their sister and now the family’s sole breadwinner. On their way back, a timber truck rammed into Surendran’s autorickshaw near Perwad in Kumbla, flinging Gangadharan, an auto mechanic, and Surendran out. Another truck ran over them, killing them on the spot.
Kamalakshan, who worked at a furniture shop, died 10 days later in the hospital. Their father, Malayan Kannan, had died of a suspected heart attack in 1993. After him, it was the three brothers who fought the family’s land rights case. “After their death, some said it could have been murder,” said Kamalakshi. “But we didn’t have the means to fight another legal battle.”
Only Gangadharan was married. When he died, his children were five, two, and just nine months old. “I raised them. The eldest son and the youngest daughter are graduates now, still looking for jobs,” said Kamalakshi, who runs a driving school, set up with the help of Transport officials after the brothers died.
Now, with the court battle heating up, an eviction notice in hand, and two more daughters, Mani and Sridevi, lost to cancer, old suspicions have begun to stir again. In a recent letter to Revenue Minister K Rajan, Laxmi urged the government to reopen the investigation into the 22-year-old road accident that claimed the lives of her three sons.
In 1971, a single bench of the Kerala High Court directed that Laxmi’s family be shifted to another plot under the Kerala Land Reforms Act, based on a plea by Vasu and his sister Sulochana. Acting on this, the Kasaragod Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) issued an order on April 30, 1973, asking Laxmi’s family to move to a new plot within the same village.
But in 1998, the Kasaragod Munsiff Court- the lowest civil court- quashed the RDO’s eviction order, citing the 1981 full-bench ruling in George vs State of Kerala, which held that RDOs had no independent power to order evictions under the Act. Only the government could issue such orders after arranging alternative land. The Subordinate Judge upheld this verdict in 1992.
However, in the second appeal by Vasu and Sulochana, the High Court reversed both civil court judgments. Laxmi moved the Supreme Court, but her petition was dismissed, closing the legal door in that round. After the setback, Laxmi approached the RDO seeking allocation of alternative land. Interpreting this request as her ‘consent’ to shift- a requirement under the Act- the RDO issued a second eviction order on May 28, 2002, asking her to move to another plot.
But Laxmi challenged this second order too before the High Court in 2012. In 2023, Justice Amit Rawal quashed both the 1973 and 2002 eviction orders issued by the RDO, reiterating that eviction powers lay solely with the government. “The law is clear, the government must speak. If a subordinate officer speaks, it is not the government’s voice, but the officer’s,” said Laxmi’s counsel, Adv Kodoth Sreedharan, quoting the High Court order.
Vasu and Sulochana filed a second appeal. On June 18, the division bench overturned the single bench order, stating there was “absolutely no warrant whatsoever” for such interference. They upheld both RDO orders and directed the state to shift Laxmi’s family to the alternative plot. Yet, despite the apparent finality, the court postponed the formal disposal of the appeal and scheduled the next hearing for July 10.
That’s when the real twist emerged. A third eviction order was issued, this time by the tahsildar. Kamalakshi, Laxmi’s daughter, filed an RTI with the RDO to identify the exact land her elderly mother was supposed to move to. The reply, dated June 28, stunned her: “There is no document in this office allocating the plot with Survey No. 122/1Pt to Lakshmi Amma,” said the RDO.
If Laxmi is evicted without being assigned alternative land, it would amount to illegal displacement under the Kerala Land Reforms Act, said Adv Sreedharan. The Act protects the rights of a ‘kudikidappukaran’. Section 75(3) allows landowners with less than one acre (as on July 1, 1969) to apply to the government to shift a kudikidappukaran, but only within two years of the amendment. After that, the settler’s consent is mandatory. If approved, the landowner must deposit 87.5 per cent of the land cost; the remaining 12.5 per cent comes from a state benefit fund. Only then can eviction proceed.
Yet, today, 51 years after the first shifting order, the Kasaragod Tahsildar told Onmanorama: “We haven’t been able to locate the land assigned to Laxmi in 1973. We’ll inform the court tomorrow.”