BJP Should Stop Befooling People, Ensure Rights Over Inhabited Lands
All India Kisan Mahasabha organised a convention in Uttarakhand’s Lalkuan on ‘Demand of Revenue Village and Forest Right Act’ on 6 August. AIKM national secretary Purushottam Sharma was the keynote speaker. He said that the BJP government in Uttarakhand is befooling people residing in forest lands and forest villages by misleading them with wrong information regarding forest rights and related legislations. “The so called ‘double engine’ government is misleading on the question of declaring Bidukhatta revenue village, which was also BJP’s electoral promise. BJP lacks that political honesty hence not placing the issue before the state Assembly and the Parliament where it is in majority. Now its local MLA is misguiding own electorate by calling them to place the claims under a wrong legislation only to avoid the issue.”
He said that the Forest Rights Act 2006 envisages to give land rights for those inhabited in forests for more that seventy five years and in those cases too the government has failed to give dwellers their rightful due in majority of cases. Surprisingly, in Uttarakhand not even a single such claim was accepted or passed by the state government out of more than ten thousands filed in different districts. Nationally nearly fifteen lakh claims under FRA have been rejected till 2019 on flimsy grounds making the FRA a tool of taking away traditional forest rights of genuine people.
But the case of Bindukhatta is entirely different where thousands of families live after migration from many districts of Uttarakhand, their demand for revenue village rights is decades old and has been in principle accepted by all the political parties who use this issue to capture votes in elections. This is a political issue that can be resolved only through parliamentary decision but the BJP and its MLAs are trying to mislead the people.
CPIML Uttarakhand state secretary Indresh Maikhuri addressed the convention and said that the Bindukhatta would have been declared a revenue village long ago if there were no political manoeuvrings by ruling parties. BJP got people's votes on the promise it made but does not want to give people their rights, instead it has now documented the same people as ‘encroachers’. This will be opposed and the struggle will be intensified and local BJP MLA’s attempts of bamboozling people to hide his failures will be foiled.
He said that the BJP is conducting a huge displacement drive throughout the state evicting poor and toiling people who were living on those lands for decades and generations. This is being done to clear lands for ruling party’s crony capitalist friends.
The convention unanimously passed a resolution demanding to immediately start the procedure for transfer of land rights/entitlements to residents of Bindukhatta unanimously.
