No residents, 14 Sangrur villages only on paper

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Sangrur, December 28

Young farmer Satwant Singh is unaware that the land he has been cultivating for the last many years does not fall in Sunam, but in Sansarpura village, a “bechirag” (without population) village of the district. Satwant Singh is not the only one, but there are many youngsters of 14 such villages, who are unaware of “bechirag” villages.

“I am unaware that my land falls in Sansarpura village. My father must be aware of the fact because I do not come regularly to my fields, but my father does,” Satwant said.

The perusal of revenue records of Sangrur shows that there are 14 such villages, located in different parts of the district. Despite having total 2,615 hectares of fertile land registered under their names, these villages only exist on paper. Reason: During the consolidation of land after 1955, residents of these villages either shifted to adjacent villages or to other villages.

As per official record, such villages are Beed Ashwan, Panjbeeri, Beed Mehsampur, Sansarpura, Kabirpura, Vajidpur, Kurm, Ramgarh, Beed Sherwanikot, Chandigarh, Anaitpura, Hazoorgarh, Sampurangarh and Beed Emamgarh.

“After land consolidation, all 14 villages have been existing only in papers. The chunks of land do exit under their names, but there is no registered voter or resident in these villages as mainly the lands are registered in the names of residents of adjacent or other villages,” said Gagandeep Singh, District Revenue Officer (DRO), Sangrur.

“I am not aware of the existence of any Panjbeeri village near here because I have never heard about such village,” said Harnek Singh, a youngster from Alloarkh village.

But Sukhdev Singh (60) from Bhawanigarh said he had heard about the existence of Panjbeeri village between Bhawanigarh and Alloarkh. Similarly, Naib Singh from Ram Nagar Sibia village is also unaware of the existence of Beed Ashwan village.

“It’s really strange that I do not know that in papers another village Beed Ashwan exists near my village,” he said.