Give back school’s land, MIC told

Party branch chief revives controversy about alleged land grab in Bandar Utama.

KLANG: A local MIC leader today asked the party to return a piece of land that he said was originally alienated for a Tamil school.

V Thiagarajan, who heads the Taman Mujur MIC branch, said party president G Palanivel should “do the right thing” by ensuring that the Effingham Tamil School get back the three acres of prime land.

The school is located in Bandar Utama, Damansara. The accusation about the land grab first surfaced in 2009, with former students and residents of the area claiming that the developer of Bandar Utama had set aside six acres for the school in 1999.

They said the late K Sivalingam, an MIC leader and an executive councillor in the then BN-led state government, decided that only three acres should be given to the school and the rest to the party.

There was also an allegation of mismanagement of RM300,000 in developer contributions to the school. MIC was accused of trying to channel the money to its Maju Institute of Education Development (MIED) although the developer disagreed.

MIC has claimed that there was an error in the description of the proprietor in the land title and that the party is the rightful owner of the three acres.

Currently, the school has 600 pupils, but the number is expected to increase steadily.

Thiagarajan told FMT he had “solid evidence” that all six acres belonged to the school.

“I plead with Palanivel to use his veto power to give back the land to the school,” he said.

“I have all the evidence to show clearly that the land MIC claims as its own should be part of school.”