Kayal Raja Muricken

Murikkummoottil Thommen Joseph (died 9 December 1972), known locally as Kayal Raja, Muricken was an Indian farmer. Murickan, a rich and innovative paddy farmer who in the 1930s had converted more than 2,000 acres of backwaters into paddy farmland. These fertile, below-sea level fields, which made the Kuttanadu region in Alappuzha the state's rice bowl, were taken over by the state government in 1972 as part of the land reforms initiated by the first Communist ministry in 1957 and re-distributed to the landless.  He had founded a church at chittirappally.