Karnataka appears to be on the cusp of another historic land struggle. Perhaps not as militant or as visible as the street marches organised by the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti in the 1970s, but no less significant in terms of its vision or potential for transformation.
A small number of Dalits from seven districts in Karnataka told the jury of a public hearing in Bengaluru about how their families lost land to people from dominant castes and due to court rulings. Their stories were representative of 50 others whose testimonies will be presented to the government along with the observations of the jury.
The public hearing on the implementation of the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Transfer of Certain Lands) Act, 1978, was held on Saturday, June 6.
The hearing was the result of over six months of work put in by the PTCL Kaayde Bhoomi Vanchitara Horata Samiti, the All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ), Manthan Law, Alternative Law Forum (ALF), and independent progressive researchers.
Called the PTCL Act for short, the law itself was the result of a land agitation led by the Dalit Sangharasha Samiti in the 1970s. Under the law, land owned by people of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes cannot be transferred to non SC or non ST people.
The public hearing was organised after compiling the testimonies of about 50 people from seven districts—Bengaluru Urban and Rural, Kolar, Tumakuru, Chitradurga, Bengaluru South, and Davanagere.
The jury panel comprised retired Supreme Court judge Justice V Gopal Gowda, former IAS officers SM Jamdar and D Thangaraj, and activist Jyothi Raj, and legal expert on PTCL cases HL Venkatesh.
About 15 Dalit people spoke of how they lost their land. One common obstacle that emerged was the 2017 Supreme Court ruling in the Nekkanti Rama Lakshmi case. The SC dismissed the case stating that there had been a delay of 20 years in filing the application to reclaim the land, even though the law itself did not specify that claims had to be filed within a certain period.
Rangamma, of Chinakavajra village in Madhugiri taluk in Tumakuru district, told the jury about how her husband’s grandfather Rangaiah was cheated out of a portion of his land. Chinakavajra village has 300 Vokkaliga families, 20 Dalit families, and three Naika families.
She said that Rangaiah was granted two acres of darkhast land in 1954. For several years the family cultivated ragi and other crops and sometimes even had enough left over to either sell or simply give away to someone in need.
Once when Rangaiah needed money to treat his wife, he approached a Vokkaliga man for Rs 200. He got the money, but did not realise that a sale deed for one acre had been executed without his knowledge. In 1961, the Vokkaliga man and his goons began harassing Rangaiah’s family, claiming that the land was theirs. Finally, in 2016 they came and assaulted the family with weapons and drove them off.
Rangamma later told TNM that the attackers stripped them, beat them, and rubbed chilli powder in their eyes. Her family filed an atrocity complaint and the other side responded with an allegation of assault.
“We’ve been shattered by this. Now we have to buy food, and look for work as agricultural labourers. But work isn’t always available and there are a lot of people who need work,” Rangamma told TNM.
“We’ve been very pained by all this, they created a lot of trouble for us,” she added.
Her case is currently in the Karnataka High Court.
Manjunath, founder of the PTCL Horata Samiti, told TNM that he started the Samiti after he lost his own family land in Magadi taluk in 2018 after a long legal battle. “The High Court simply dismissed mine and 45 other applications for delay, citing the Nekkanti case. That was when I learned what real law is, even though the Act itself is good.”
Once he began looking for others like him, he realised the scale of the impact. In 2022, he led a seven-month agitation in Freedom Park, which eventually led to the state government amending the PTCL Act in 2023 to explicitly say that there would be no time period limitation to invoke the Act.
When the constitutionality of the amendment was challenged in the Karnataka High Court, several members of the organisers of the public hearing also fought to defend the amendment. Hearings concluded 10 months ago and the verdict is now awaited.
Manjunath estimates that there are hundreds of cases in each district. In Bengaluru Urban alone, he says there are about 4,000 such claims, of which 3,000 were dismissed citing Nekkanti.
“Now, without bothering about whether the claim is genuine, the courts simply ask when the application was filed and what the delay was, and dismiss it. That ruling has completely destroyed the PTCL Act,” he said.
Justice V Gopala Gowda said that in Nekkanti, the Supreme Court had violated its own ruling in the Manchegowda and others vs State of Karnataka case in 1984. The Manchegowda case had challenged the constitutionality of the PTCL Act. The SC upheld the Act.
Justice Gowda said that economic freedom was essential to the meaningful enjoyment of the constitutional promise of the right to life. Access to land was fundamental to securing such freedom, he said according to a press release.
Former IAS officer Thangaraj said that significant challenges remain in the implementation of the law. Despite favourable orders from Assistant Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners, beneficiaries often struggle to secure physical possession of their land due to a lack of cooperation from revenue and police officials, he said.
Retired IAS officer SM Jamdar stated that the PTCL Act holds a mirror to the social inequalities that exist around us. There is a mindset that sustains such inequalities, he said. He called for a people’s movement to get justice.
Jyothi Raj, President of the Bhooshakti Kendra, said land is not merely a political or economic asset for Dalits but also a source of cultural identity, dignity, and belonging.
Describing the Constitution as a transformative document, she observed that its values have yet to reach every household and stressed that true social upliftment would come only when constitutional principles are embraced by all.
Other speakers at the event noted that several other court rulings which read down the applicability of the PTCL Act to different types of land had almost made the law redundant.
Addressing the gathering later, Manjunath urged the audience to brace for the long haul. “Only a sick person can go to a hospital and doctors too will treat only the sick. Be prepared to fight for your land. Nobody else can do it for you. I also lost my land in 2018. I was alone then, now look at how many of us there are from across the state.”
But he also warned that the fight was not to be taken lightly. “The political establishment, the judiciary are against us, and the bureaucracy is the worst (of the three). We need a fight on the streets as well as in the courts. If you’re going to go to court, be prepared to stick it out because one judgement can destroy the whole community,” Manjunath said, referring to the Nekkanti judgement.
