Around 30 families of Herur gram panchayat in Koppa taluk of Chikkamagaluru have put up tents on a vacant government land as a mark of protest over the delay in granting sites and houses for the roofless.

K.L. Ashok, an activist with Karnataka Janashakti, told The Hindu that the people who put up the tents were natives of villages in Koppa, and they were all Dalits. “They have submitted applications seeking sites for houses in the prescribed format. As their demand has not been fulfilled, with no way out, they have put up the tents on the vacant land,” he said.

After their repeated appeals to the gram panchayat and other offices seeking sites went unanswered, they identified a vacant revenue land about 6 km from Jayapura and put up the tents. A majority of them are plantation workers who worked in estates. As long as they worked for the estate owners, they were provided with houses on the estates. However, as they retired, they had to make their own arrangements to stay.

Mr. Ashok said that the estate owners send the workers out of the houses once they retire. “The minimum rent for a house in the taluk is about ₹5,000 a month. How can the retired workers pay so much rent? The government should grant sites to the needy. More than 50 lakh applications are pending before the government across the State,” he added.