Thousands challenge illegal land acquisition in Jaffna

Around 1,474 persons owning land in Jaffna filed a writ application yesterday in the Court of Appeal, challenging the attempts to illegally and unlawfully acquire their private land. Further, 2,000 petitioners are to file on the same issue in the near future.

The petition challenges the Section 2 notices, issued under the Land Acquisition Act which specifies that 6,381 acres and 38.97 perches, are to be acquired for the ‘Defence Battalion Headquarters Jaffna, regularising handover of area on which High Security Zone (Palaly and Kankesanthurai) is established.’ The massive area that is identified constitutes approximately 25.8 square km and is more than two-thirds the entire land area on which Colombo City (which spans an area of 37.21 square km) is located.

All petitioners own substantial tracts of land, that fall within the above area and were displaced from their land due to war. Although the war ended in 2009, the petitioners have been prevented from returning to their land due to military occupation of the area and barbed wire fences and barricades manned by military.

Although certain areas were demarcates High Security Zones (HSZ) with the using of emergency regulations during the war, the area in question was never demarcated a HSZ, and there was no legal basis for the use of HSZ with the lapse of the state of emergency in 2011. The petition contends that there is no ‘public purpose’ served as specified in the Act by the acquisition of their land as the area was never a HSZ nor does it exist as one.

The Petition has cited as respondents, the Land Acquiring Officer for Jaffna, Minister for Lands and Land Development and the Land Survey Officer, Jaffna District. P.C. K. Kanag-Isvaran, and Attorneys-at-Law M.A. Sumanthiran, Viran Corea, Lakshmanan Jeyakumar, Bhavani Fonseka and Niran Anketell settled papers, with Moahan Balendran as the instructing Attorney.