The decades old demand of government acquisition of thousands of acres of land of erstwhile Bettiah Estate was eventually fulfilled after a very long struggle of communist parties in Bihar. The CPIML had been fighting for this popular demand of peasants and landless poor for almost four decades. Now the Bihar government has acquisitioned these lands through a legislation enacted in the Assembly.
CPIML Central Committee member and MLA in Bihar Virendra Gupta has said in a statement that another long battle seems to be ahead because part of the said lands is currently occupied illegally by some erstwhile landlords, Estate owners and BJP-JDU protected dominating musclemen in the region. Such illegal occupations must be evicted by the Nitish government and the land be redistributed to the poor, landless, sharecroppers etc without delay.
This must also be ensured by the government that poor and landless living for a very long time on these lands must not be displaced, because they are the genuine and most deserving people who had toiled for generations on the Bettiah Estate. The party has warned the state government of imminent mass movement if the latter fails to provide rights over the lands to the deserving poor.
