They plan to raise bank loans to build their own homes and take up agriculture

Landless Dalit families in a Kancheepuram village have used the Right to Information (RTI) Act to prompt the district administration to hand over land that was originally allotted to them several years ago, thanks to the initiative of a grassroots NGO.

A total of 106 Dalit families in Alisoor village were allotted 100 sq m by the Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar Housing and Development Board in 1998.

The local district administration even issued the original patta document with individual plot numbers. However, the allotment remained on paper and the villagers never got the land though they approached the local administration several times.

The families were residing in hutments on poramboke land, when in 2008, Kancheepuram-based NGO Hand in Hand started working in the village by forming self-help groups and began development projects.

A Citizen Centre Enterprise was established as an IT empowerment initiative that helped villagers enrol for computer courses, register for voting, apply for ration cards, pensions or prepare petitions, a spokesman for the NGO said.

A Good Governance Rights Protection Committee (GGRPC) was then set up to train villagers in citizen rights and duties. “With the help of this committee, the villagers learnt to use the RTI Act to unearth information on the allotment details of the land,” the spokesman said.

Armed with the RTI information, villagers prepared an application with the signatures of all the beneficiaries along with the land patta copies to be forwarded to the local administration with a copy sent to the District Collector.

Positive response

To the delight of the villagers, the application evoked a response from the administration. District Collector Santhosh K. Misra undertook a visit to the village.

He personally supervised the handing over of land to the beneficiary families. The villagers plan to raise bank loans to build their own homes and take up agriculture.