Zero Landless: Kerala faces uphill task

Even as Kannur is declared as the first Zero Landless district, the government faces an uphill 
task in implementing the project in most of the districts with the authorities finding it hard 
to identify lands.
Kannur and Kasargode are the only districts where the government has identified excess plots.In all the other districts, the landless outnumber the plots identified, which raises doubt over the implementation of the UDF government’s flagship populist programme of distributing three cents of land each to poor families in a bid to make the state a place without landless people 
by 2015.
Though land  is available in most of the  districts, the government is facing many hurdles. Land
such as those which have completed lease period, encroached lands and lands that have 
violated lease agreement are available, the officials said and alleged that there was no 
political will to take back these lands. 
It has been alleged that though the government claims to have identified of about 75,000 

plots in the first phase, the proceedings have been completed only in the case of 25,000
families. Moreover, several of the lands distributed were mired in
controversies related to ownership or already owned by other people. 

Source: The New Inian Express
http://epaper.newindianexpress.com/180117/The-New-Indian-Express-Thiruvananthapuram/02-11-2013#page/4/1