VACB sleuths peruse records at the Revenue Divisional Office, Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam as part of Operation Haritha Kavacham to detect illegal conversion of paddy, wetland areas for prime real estate development: Photo Courtesy: VACB
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The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) has uncovered a well-entrenched racket involving real estate developers, agents, and revenue officials who illegally convert paddy and wetland areas for construction, including suburban villas and gated communities, which are in high demand in Kerala’s booming housing market.
On Friday (November 7, 2025), the VACB conducted surprise inspections at 27 Revenue Divisional Offices (RDOs) and also at the offices of 32 Deputy Collectors tasked with enforcing the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008.
Director, VACB, Manoj Abraham, authorised the operation code-named Haritha Kavacham after the anti-corruption agency’s intelligence wing flagged the existence of a mafia, including criminal gangs that own dumper truck fleets and use illegally mined earth to convert paddy fields into dry land for pricey construction.
Investigators said the “agent-builder-realtor-official” nexus provided cover for the widespread environmental crime by legitimising the illegal conversion.
They said RDOs were the racket’s hubs. The offices maintain the wetland paddy land data bank, an essential digital record that identifies and categorises the nature of the land within their respective jurisdictions.
The database clearly delineates wetlands and paddy lands, on which the law prohibits landfills or construction. Field inspections, surveys, and satellite imagery form the basis of the database, which records the land’s status as of the Act’s entry into force (2008).
Investigators said the corruption starts when builders buy large tracts of wetland at relatively cheap prices, fill them with earth and apply for conversion to dry land. Some applicants fraudulently claim that the “dry land” was incorrectly marked as a wetland in the data bank.
Officials said that for sizeable backhanders, corrupt revenue officials and their agents exempt the land from the wetland/paddy land data bank without proper verification or field surveys. The nexus also tampers with the Basic Tax Register and categorises the unlawfully reclaimed wetland as “dry land” to facilitate illegal real estate development.
The VACB randomly inspected scores of applications, possibly submitted by real estate developers, for exemption from the wetland data bank and reclassification as dry land.
In Malappuram district, the VACB found that the mobile phone contact number was the same for 11 title deed holders who sought reclassification of their paddy fields as dry land.
At the RDO office in Thaliparambu, Kannur, the VACB detected large-scale exemptions from the data bank for real estate development. Mr. Abraham has directed the agency to engage the Kerala Remote Sensing and Environmental Centre to detect illegal paddy land conversions in the State.
Officials said the scale of corruption involved as huge. In the RDO office at Muvattupuzha, Ernakulam, the VACB found illegal transactions between real estate developers and revenue officials amounting to ₹17 lakhs on a given day.
Published – November 08, 2025 12:41 pm IST
