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Writer's pictureThe Auroville Files

Land Board operations exposed: Auroville

Updated: Mar 9, 2021

The following are extracts of reports made by an Aurovilian working in Land Board, as usual no action has been taken so far:


1. Banu’s brother land encroachment: L’avenir Balamurugan and Land board Staff Krishnamurthy are liaising with the revenue department authorities regarding the patta cancellation of AV land (opp. Dinesh tea shop) which was fraudulently transferred to Banu’s brother’s name. If you peruse the land board file, you would be able to correlate the dates of events of this patta transfer and the fencing of this land. It is suffice to say that the previous LB team had been effectively fighting this encroachment keeping the land in our possession, however, it was boldly fenced once the team changed. But Yuval maintains that this encroachment was the fault of the previous group and protects Banu. Banu in turn backs Yuval in the clean consciousness sub-group, which is formed only to frame Peter-Clarence-Smith of corruption during the year 1996 and make him pay all the compensation and send him out of the country. All the members, especially Banu, Rajavelu, Helena and Padhmanabhan strongly backed Yuval on this and Renu mentioned once that Peter used to take money in bags illegally for land dealings, hence, he deserves this. I found the cornering of Peter alone for the whole group’s work, confusing, however, a lot of money and energy are spent on this clean consciousness exercise just because Banu, Rajavelu and Yuval strongly feels that Peter deserves to compensate all the money in AV and quit India with nothing.


In fact, Balamurugan (L'avenir consultant) conveyed to Yuval, in the presence of Renu, Helena, Rajavelu and I, on 28th February 2020 (Friday) that somebody from land board is leaking all the information to Banu’s brother and that the tahsildar and other officials are simply not acting on any of AV requests regarding the cancellation of Banu’s brother’s name from the patta of AV land. And Yuval mentioned to him that he knew who is leaking this information. Although, LB claims that Banu does not involve in this case due to conflict of interest, Krishnamurthy is handling the revenue department liaison. Banu supported Krishnamurthy in the cases of Naicker land negotiation and in Ansari land (Alankuppam) negotiation in which Krishnamurthy negotiated the price with LB, on behalf of the seller as a broker. This is the case, where the seller offered the price of 16 lakh per acre during site visit, which was later negotiated by Krishnamurthy for 39 lakh with Helena, in my presence. Helena ignored my feedback and later pushed this purchased with Banu, Renu, Rajavelu, Padhu and Yuval. I maintained my disagreement to the unnatural price hike and Krishnamurthy’s (land board staff) role negotiating for the seller. So, Krishnamurthy works for Banu in this negotiation against AV. Almost all the members are very soft on this land encroachment and slowing down the legal action.


2. Naicker land purchase negotiation: I have already given you a separate report on blocking of the Naicker land purchase (15 acres) near Sidhdhartha farm next to Irumbai temple. Please refer to my last email (7th Feb 2020) to you. In this case also Krishnamurthy is involved and Banu gradually influenced the team to drop the purchase on mere stories without any supporting documents. Renu, Rajavelu and Yuval backed Banu while Helena chose to stay silent, although she did not agree. This land is being negotiated by a real estate broker (from Krishnamurthy’s village) and the owner indicated that Krishnamurthy approached him to sell it to that broker. Rajavelu aggressively backs Krishnamurthy in all these, since he is his mother’s own brother and Renu and Yuval blindly backs Banu and Rajavelu in all their transactions.


3. Negotiating members: It is true that the negotiations are being done only by Banu, Rajavelu and Padhmanabhan and other members don’t feel confident to talk to the sellers and I am purposefully discouraged from participating under the pretext that I do not know the village practices. Here, I noticed a huge flaw that the price negotiations are done the village way, the extortionist way, not the professional way of negotiation. This disadvantages Auroville, since the negotiating members are very lenient and considerate in giving exorbitant prices, and most of the time, either the sellers are their own relatives or their village clan, so the deciding factor becomes either pressure or favour and not reasonable pricing and negotiation. The donations were taken rather too carelessly. Helena famously says that Mandakini Lucien Brun has a high ego because she raises the donation and hence, she hates her. She had the same attitude with all the donors and she was disrespectful of handling the donation fund, which I found rather ungrateful and irresponsible.


4. Land purchase priority: The priority of the lands to be purchased are being decided by the negotiating members’ individual sentiments and desires and not according to the available lands for purchase. For example, from fertile region, a foreign aurovilian kept insisting on purchasing the connecting lands that came at a reasonable price (she brought the land owner directly to LB), which everyone rejected since all the members had a personal unfavourable opinion on the aurovillian who brought the owner. My only voice suggesting to look into that purchase which is a connecting land between AV lands, inside green belt was ignored by my team and at some point she got frustrated and she is now leaving AV for good.


5. Swindling of money by staff on daily basis: On the misuse of land board accounts, yes, two of the staffs who are close to Banu, Rajavelu, yuval and Padhmanabhan alone are used for most of the works, while land board has a whole lot of other staffs. Initially Renu told me that Krishnamurthy was fired by the previous team for leaking the LB information to the village in an encroachment matter, who was later hired by new team. I checked the information and the incident was indeed shockingly true. You may check with previous team members.


6. Once, I was present when Adhi, land board staff, was asking for Rs.1,50,000/- on voucher, based on a pink trip sheet, convincing Helena to consider it as bill. Helena did not understand the Pink sheet or the bill, but she quickly obliged to his request. I intervened and requested him to bring the invoice and not the trip sheet. He got offended and Helena immediately jumped on me to protect him by shouting at me that I am making unwanted accusations. Later, Padhmanabhan personally attacked me in WC saying I don’t trust the staff. I just asked for the bills and insisted to Helena that we cannot give a huge amount on the voucher. Since then, the staff have specific instructions from other LB members, not to let me access any accounts or to discuss any work with me. When I brought this matter to the working committee, Helena, Yuval, Padhma and Renu shouted at me saying Land board is an independent group and has nothing to do with FAMC or working committee and I should stop running to FAMC and WC. In spite of my objection, the money was given to Aadhi. Aadhi later bullied me saying why the hell you are a member of landboard, in the presence of Rajavelu, which Banu justified saying this is the way he used to talk to her since he is her relative.


7. Gokulam Farm: The landboard members did not take any steps to protect the 2 ½ acres of this unmanned land stewarded by a local aurovillian, until I foresaw the legal consequences of the current situations and unofficially requested the FAMC to take action to avoid any unpleasant legal consequences owing to the emotional situation associated with the aurovilian’s wife, under whose possession the AV land was left to. The land board members casually gossiped about the situation and covered up the issue. This is yet another example of personal favours to village buddies. This issue was not looked into until I escalated it to the FAMC members.


8. Auro-oceanic negotiation: In this matter, Rahul from housing service evaluated the building and submitted an Assessment report to landboard, in which I found that the land (30 cents) was priced at 90 lakh and inventories such as bath towels, doormats, spoons, etc., valued at a whopping 12 lakh with the total arrived at some exorbitant price in crores. I pointed this out to Renu and all the landboard members and stated that this pricing is unreasonable. Especially when we have lastly purchased an acre for 50 lakh in that area, paying 90 lakh for 30 cent in Auro-oceanic would hike-up the land price in that area. Later Rajavelu, pressurised me through some AVlians, who personally helped me in my housing issue, to not raise any objection for the negotiation at 4 ½ to 5 crore. I was rather stubborn and later, he worked out that I am dropped out of this matter. Since then, he was also harbouring a grudge against me and called me an enemy to local tamilians, which is not true. I have been giving a lot of free legal services to the local tamil aurovilians to repay the debt to them. In fact, once when an aurovilian was attacked by Vikram, I had to oblige, to explain to him of the legal position of this person's case, which Rajavelu has been using against me, in landboard after the Auro-oceanic incident.


9. During the month of November, 2019, Rajavelu called me one evening and informed me that Yuval has taken Rs.5,00,000/- from the Land board funds for building a compound wall for his own house in eternity, which I checked with Banu, who said that it was done with the approval of WC and FAMC and it was a right utilisation of funds for Yuval’s property. However, I noticed that when other Aurovilians, for example Angad came for fencing of AV lands to protect from the neighbour politician Tholamur Kannan, Aadhi, LB staff told Helena, in my presence that why should LB give him any money and Helena just obliged his orders. I noticed that she was quiet an ineffective executive member very obliging, with an argument that her integrity to the group is very intact. I was surprised that she thinks that protecting the wrongdoings and misgivings of fellow members and staff is her integrity and not to Auroville or the trusting donors who devotedly & dedicatedly raise donation and trust the land board members for spending it meaningfully for the benefit of AV. She may not have any individual interests, however, she was too obliging to the individual’s interests. In principle, LB does not have a policy of giving funds for fencing stewarded lands, whatever may be the situation, however, it was relaxed by Yuval for his own property to the tune of 5 lakh rupees.


10. These are a few instances that I could write. Without blaming any individual, I would like to carefully put it here that the members or staff from the local villages inevitably have a personal interest or a fear or favour to oblige to, which is the result of the encroachment and other legal issues that we have been fighting today. Even though we have a big team of Land board staff, we always get the information of encroachment only after the land is gone out of our possession, which I do not understand, since, checking and protecting the unmanned lands are their duty since most of these lands are situated in and around their villages and they knew the encroachments and the encroachers as well. Hence, anyone from the surrounding village would not be able to give up their family, friends’ and their village interests over AV interests. Therefore, it is very important that a full-fledged Estate Office is set up with professionally and technically equipped personnel to administer lands and fight the encroachments, land grabs, legal cases, etc. So, yes, it is true that LB is left at the mercy of local staff and local members since the foreign members are very obliging either because of fear or for some personal favour. With a little research, I found out that the previous members had absolute control over the staff on the administration and the accounts. You may notice a shift from the last group to the current group on funds spent on daily maintenance, procurement, administration, etc.with proper bills compared to the current group. Hence, my insistence for an internal forensic audit.


11. I do understand and agree that in the past we had been very lenient and magnanimous in our land dealings and transactions, however, in today’s scenario, we cannot afford to have a defeatist attitude towards our land administration, purchase, pricing, enforcement of land protection, etc., My objective was only to ensure that AV is not taken for granted and an appropriate legal body within Auroville is set up that could tackle the legal challenges in the administration. Besides, we cannot be bullied by the speculators, realtors or brokers in extorting higher prices from AV. At some point we need to work towards having an evaluator from the tax department who could evaluate the land prices with which AV could set adequate parameters in land pricing and negotiations. Besides, having a full-fledged estate office would eventually facilitate enforcement of land acquisition process to acquire lands for AV. Currently, LB administration and land protection is stifled under some of the above mentioned flaws, which could be internally set right. The decision is yours.


12. I never intended to make it this big, however, the situation has escalated to a level where, I am in the eye of the storm, hence, I do not have any choice but to write to WC and FAMC and clarify, despite my greatest fears of facing the consequences, probably personal attacks from these individuals and the people whose interests I might have affected during my presence in the land board. Further, after these incidents and the current developments, I do not think it would be feasible to function alongside the landboard team. Besides, I am down with a back injury and would like to take my time to reflect upon the future decision about my participation in land board.


 

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