The opposition persisted with the Thunchath Ezhuthachan Malayalam University land deal in the Assembly even after Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan disallowed an adjournment motion on the issue. The issue was raised once again as a corruption charge late in the day during the discussion for demands for grants by Muslim League's Tirur MLA C Mammutty.

Inside the house, Mammutty merely said that a ruling party MLA and his brothers was behind the conspiracy. Outside, during a press briefing, he identified the MLA as V Abdurahiman, the LDF-backed Independent.

Besides the inflated cost of the land, which Mammutty had touched upon earlier in the day, the Tirur MLA came up with two more charges.

One, more than half of the 11 acres proposed to be taken over by the state for the University is made up of swamps and mangroves, and therefore unfit for construction. “What is left for the construction of the University building is less than 5 acres. Irony is, the University now functions on 5 acres of land given free of cost. What is the point in now finding a land that is less than 5 acres,” Mammutty said.

Higher Education Minister K T Jaleel did not attempt to counter this charge in his reply.

The second charge was not raised inside the Assembly, but outside during a press briefing. It was opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala who mentioned the charge first. He said some of the people who were invited to the meeting convened by the then Malappuram collector to fix the cost of land did not possess a piece of land in the said area.

Mammutty then named a Niyas who was part of the discussion and who did not own even a single cent within the area that was proposed to be acquired. “They ensured that the cost was fixed at an exorbitant level and then went about purchasing the land,” Mammutty said.

The Collector's meeting was held in February, 2016, and Mammutty produced title deeds to show that Niyaz had purchased some 50 cents in the area two months later in April. He said some others who were part of the Collector's meeting had owned small bits within the area identified for acquisition. “After the price was fixed, they amassed more lands in the area,” Mammutty said. “This is why we call this a massive loot of public money,” he said.

The minister was unable to respond to this as this was not raised in the Assembly.

Mammutty had also tabled in the House title deeds that showed that the land in question was purchased for Rs 9,000 in 2015.

The minister did not seem to give much credence to the figure in the title deed. “We all know that the cost is always suppressed in the title deed,” he said. Mammutty said the fair value of the land in question was only Rs 3,000. (However, during the February 2016 meeting that the Collector had convened to decide on the price, the owners had claimed that the market cost of the land varied from Rs 3 lakh to Rs seven lakh.)

Jaleel reiterated that all decisions related to the identification and acquisition of land were taken during the UDF tenure. “The only wrong that we had committed was that we brought down the cost of land by Rs 10,000 and managed to save Rs 1.5 crore for the state,” he said sarcastically. (The Malappuram Collector had done a price re-negotiation during the LDF tenure and had brought down the cost of land from Rs 1.70 lakh a cent to Rs 1.60 lakh a cent.)

Way back in 2012, the initial plan was to acquire 100 acres for the Malayalam University at Athavanad Village, which too is in Tirur. The plan was dropped following stiff objection raised by the public.

Three years later in 2015, the former UDF government issued an order to acquire 17.21 acres of land in Vettom village through the negotiated purchase route. “An amount of Rs 25 crore was also disbursed from the plan head of the Education Department for the acquisition of the land in September 2015,” Jaleel said.

He said that the meeting of the price assessment committee convened by the then Malappuram collector on February 17, 2016, had fixed the cost of the land at Rs 1.70 lakh a cent. “Consequent to this, Benchmark Educational Trust wrote to the University vice chancellor saying that the price was too high and that it could provide land at a cheaper cost of Rs 1.20 lakh a cent,” the minister said.

However, a technical committee formed by the VC found the earlier Vettom land to be more suitable. The government, too, had constituted an expert panel headed by the revenue additional chief secretary to go into the relative merits of the land. “They too said Vettom was more suited for the University,” Jaleel said. He said that six acres of swamp and mangroves were taken out of the area that would not be purchased by the state. Meaning, only 11 acres of the land will now be acquired.