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The Kerala Forest Department has sent official communication to the Idukki District Collector mentioning its plans to declare Engineer Mettu at Kallippara, the location where the Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kuthiana) bloomed recently, as a reserve forest.
The Neelakurinji Season between October – November in the Kallippara hills has now ended and the flowers have withered away but the arrival of tourists to this awesome landscape continues. Even without the Neelakurinji bloom the Tourists are attracted by the spectacular views all around.
The Kallippara hills in Idukki also known as Engineer Heights (Mett) is about 60 kilometres away from Kumily and is used as a base camp for all tourist activity in and around the area. The Kallippara Hills are located in Santhanpara Gram Panchayat of Kerala’s Idukki district on the Munnar-Kumily State Highway.
According to the Forest Department, the reasons behind the move is to protect the ecologically vital Kallippara hills in the Western Ghats which is an area under the Cardamom Hill Reserve (CHR). The land here is unsuitable for agriculture, say Forest officials. The proposal sent to the Collector also mentions that six varieties of Neelakurinji and some rare species of plants grow in the area.
However, the residents of the area point out that the state government had earlier filed an affidavit before the High Court which said that the area was not covered under CHR.
Such disputes also prevail in other areas between the Forest and Revenue Departments of the State Government. As a result, anxiety prevails among the local residents over the status of the land owned by them.
According to the Santhanpara Panchayat Office Staff, Neelakurinji bloomed in vast patches on the Kallippara hills from the beginning of October. It is roughly estimated that over 10 lakh people flocked to the hills during October 2022. The Panchayat President Liju Varghese mentioned that with the ending of the blooming season the local body has closed the ticket counter but the tourists are continuing to visit the Kallippara hills.
It was being proposed that the Kallippara hills will developed as a tourism destination and a memorandum was to be submitted to the District Collector in this regard. It has been reported that Tourist footfalls generated a revenue of Rs.15,03,180 lakhs during this blooming season.
During the weeks when the flowers bloomed on the hills, the Forest Department had deployed its employees in the area for crowd control and to provide security. Subsequently, the Forest authorities demanded a share of the entry fees collected by the panchayat and the same was rejected by the panchayat. In the light of this, local residents believe that the latest move of the Forest Department to declare the area as reserve forest was to get back at the panchayat.
