May Be A Front To Acquire Tribal Land: Cong MLA Raipur: Six months ago, a TOI report exposed how Chhattisgarh home minister Nankiram Kanwar’s son, Sandeep Kanwar, acted as a front and bought tribal land illegally for a power company — benami deals that were struck down by the district collector. It turns out that the home minister’s son may not be the only “front”. A below-poverty-line tribal man, registered as a MNREGA worker, has purchased land worth Rs 3.36 crore in the same village in Janjgir Champa, where Videocon Power is setting up a power project, as documents unearthed by Congress MLA Mohammed Akbar show. Akbar has accessed 45 land deeds that account for 74 acres of land purchased by Vilam Singh for Rs 3.36 crore. Vilam’s name had first surfaced in TOI’s report that mentioned he was a resident of Chirpanni village in Kawardha, part of Akbar’s constituency. “I was intrigued and I decided to probe. I found out Vilam was a 25-year-old from a poor tribal family. I tried to track him down but the village sarpanch said he was missing since Diwali.” The land purchases were made between July 2010 and January 2011. “How can a poor tribal farmer buy land worth crores? Clearly, the company has used him as front and are keeping him underground,” Akbar told TOI. Earlier in the day, Akbar held a press conference waving proof of what he called a massive conspiracy to dispossess poor tribals of their land and rights by power companies in collusion with the local administration. Since Chhattisgarh’s rules do not permit sale of tribal land to non-tribals, the companies are enlisting tribals to buy land for its project, circumventing the safeguards, which include getting clearance from the collector and providing alternate land and jobs as compensation. It’s worth recalling that Sandeep Kanwar, a tribal, had bought land from poor tribal farmers at less than one-third the rate set by the government for land acquisition for industrial projects. Since the land was sold to Kanwar, and not the company, the tribal farmers lost both a fair price and the right to rehabilitation. Taking note of TOI’s report, and the political outcry that followed, the collector of Janjgir Champa district cancelled the transfer of land, ruling it “benami” and “illegal”. He ordered that the land be restored to tribal farmers. But no action was taken against those involved.