The Pinarayi Vijayan-led Kerala government on Sunday constituted a special committee to oversee the much-delayed rehabilitation project in Wayanad following the landslides in July.

The decision was taken at a special cabinet meeting that took place online.

Chief secretary Sarada Muraleedharan’s draft rehabilitation document was approved by the cabinet at the meeting.

The Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board has drawn up the plan for the houses to be built for the displaced families.

The cabinet discussed ways to move forward with the model township project that the state government has envisaged in the Nedumbala division of Harrison Malayalam plantation’s Arappatta estate in Meppadi panchayat and the Elston estate in Kalpetta.

The chief minister himself will coordinate with the 38 organisations that had volunteered to build houses or promised to provide land to the homeless.

A senior government official privy to the cabinet meeting told The Telegraph that the state government decided to expedite the rehabilitation process at a time when several NGOs have already begun setting up dwellings for the survivors who are living in rented accommodations.

“The draft rehabilitation project document was discussed in detail at the special cabinet meeting. Each house will measure 1,000sqft and will have one storey,” said a government official.

The Kerala government had identified 65.41 hectares of land in the Nedumbala estate and 78.73 hectares in the Elston estate adjacent to the Kalpetta bypass that it plans to acquire to resettle the displaced people.

The acquisition will exclude the inhabited areas of both estates, with 10.4 hectares from the Elston estate and 6.61 hectares from the Nedumbala estate being kept out of the plan.

However, the two estate owners have approached Kerala High Court against the government’s decision to acquire land for the new townships under the Disaster Management Act.

Ahead of the cabinet meeting, Wayanad district collector D.R. Meghasree had iterated that the project would proceed as directed by the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, with plans to complete the land acquisition process by January.

Landslide survivors staged a protest in Wayanad on Sunday after the state government published a list of 388 beneficiary families of the rehabilitation project. Action council members demanded that the list be cancelled as several eligible families had beenleft out.