valluvanad was one of the early administrative divisions of the Chera kingdom.it once stretched from the Arabian sea to the attapadi hills and from nila up to melattur.the area passed through various hands including samuthiri and tippu sultan,intermingled with years of self-rule. under the british most of the region came under valluvanad taluk of madras state.post independence and with the creation of the malappuram district the region was split up among the palakkad,malappuram and thrissur districts.
a new district of valluvanad could be carved out of these district owing to the following reasons:
1 the immense size of palakkad district.to get to palakkad one have to travel nearly 70km from the western most parts of the ottapalam taluk
2 nearly 36 lakh population of malappuram district
3 cultural similarity of ottapalam,perinthalmanna and mannarkkad taluks and their differences with the rest of palakkad district.
4 ottapalam taluk in itself has a population higher than wayanad district,and the fact that nearly 40% of palakkad district resides there . but this region is far away from the district hq
the district of valluvanad will be composed of as i said earlier – ottapalam,perinthalmanna and mannarkkad taluks, together with parts of talapally taluk and parts of ponnani taluk. the proposed district will have a population of over 20 lakhs and will be financially viable as the region has many important towns like
ottapalam(pop 50,000)
shornur(pop 45,000)
perinthalmana(44,000)
which are municipalities
and others like
mannarkad(pop 44,000)
cherpulassery(pop 30,000)
pattambi(pop 24,000)
the district headquarters could be either at perinnthalmanna or ottapalam ,though ottapalam have better infrastructure including a kendriya vidyalaya.
the mannarkkad taluk must be partitioned so that attapady region remains with the palakkad district and the subsequent creation of an attapadi taluk, can bring about development to the region.the border regions of talapally taluk like thiruvilluwamala and cheruthuruthy could be added to the district .this is mainly because of the cultural affliction of these areas to the erstwhile valluvanad.
the bifurcation of malappuram and palakkad districts is the only way forward as malappuram’s population explodes and palakkad remains far away from its most populous taluk.
