M A I N   N E W S

Agitating farmers block traffic
Punjab leaders join agitation in Kashipur
Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

Udham Singh Nagar (Uttaranchal), January 7
The eviction of Punjabi and Sikh farmers from 1,200 acres of farmland, declared surplus following a Supreme Court order, has flared up into a thorny issue, here. It has opened up underlying wounds for residents, who originally did not favour joining Uttaranchal when the state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh five years ago.

Akali leaders from Punjab led by former Union Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and the BJP led by former Chief Ministers of Uttaranchal, Mr Bhagat Singh Koshiari and Mr Nityanand Swami, today jumped into the fray and promised to fight for the rights of the farmers. The Akalis regretted the fact that this district was made part of the hill state and not UP.

At a rally in Kashipur today, these leaders promised that the land would be restored to the farmers. The compensation package of Rs 61 lakh announced by the Uttaranchal Government and the award of 3.5 acres of land to each of the 103 families which owned less than 5 acres was rejected at the rally. A total 251 families have been affected by the eviction carried out in the past five days.

Protesting Sikh and Punjabi youth are blocking roads and holding up trains.

In a talk with The Tribune, Mr Dhindsa admitted, “People living in the fertile plains of the state are seeing this as a fight between them and those living in the mountainous part of this state.”

The leaders said it was not just an issue of Sikh farmers but of the entire Terai region. “Such an action is what we had feared five years ago,” thundered a former MP, Mr B.S. Bhunder, while reminding the audience that the sacrifice of Sikh farmers had been forgotten when they turned the jungles of Terai into money-spinning crop-growing lands.

Elections to the Uttaranchal Assembly are scheduled alongside elections in Punjab in February 2007 and the residents of the plains in Uttaranchal account for 26 of the 70 seats in the Assembly. Apart from the Akalis, BJP leaders of this district also stressed upon the point that residents of this district did not want to originally join Uttaranchal.

Mr H.S. Cheema, MLA from Kashipur, seen as the man behind the agitation, said, “When the state was formed we accepted our fate and even announced that we are one state but the eviction has betrayed us.”

Mr Dhindsa said that on January 23, a team led by the Akali supremo, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, all MPs and MLAs of the Shiromani Akali Dal accompanied by members of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) would visit the area and announce the action they planned to take against the eviction.

The controversial 1200 acres of land originally belonged to Mr P.N. Mehta, who died last year. A case under the Land Ceiling Act, 1972 had been carrying on for the past 30 years. When Mehta was slapped a notice under the Act, he reportedly sold the land to farmers here at reduced rates. The farmers knew that they would be evicted one day. The case kept dragging through various processes of law till the Supreme Court in a order in February 2004 declared that these were surplus lands under the Act. In Uttaranchal, the land ceiling per person is 12.5 acres. Since Mehta worked with the Escorts group, this land came to be known as “Escorts farmhouses” even as the Nanda family, the owners of Escorts, have no connection with the land.