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| Homeless after 30 years | ||
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The partition of Hindustan made the Punjabis suffer the most, especially the Sikhs.
They had to leave their homes and land.
After coming here, hey did not get the land of their choice.
The government tried its best to provide land to the farmers affected by partition.
Sikh farmers, who migrated from Pakistan, were not satisfied by the land holdings
they were given here because the facility of river water supply that they had in
Pakistan was not available here in Hindustan. So, even after coming here hey continued
their search for the land of their choice. Slowly they moved to other states
in search of land as per their choice. Western UP offered them the land they were
looking for. There were huge jungles in this area. They made this land worth
cultivating and residing with their hard work. Even the UP government initially
provided them with machinery to help them. Looking at the yielding strength
and capacity of this land, many other Punjabi families came down and settled here.
This hilly area which once used to be the home of wild animals had now big farm
house built on it. Around 1950, the UP government,
(in order to make this land flourish) gave 2000 acres of land to Escort
Tractors to establish Escort Farms. The company handed over the development
of this land to the MD of the company Mr. P N Mehta. Escort helped
in a flourishing developing of the land here. After the UP government enforced the Land Sealing Act, Escort Farms were sent legal notice to return the excessive land. In the meanwhile, P N Mehta filed a case for this land in Supreme Court. He knew that this land would not stay with him, so he started selling away the land held by the company. Being very fertile, this land attracted many Sikh farmers who bought it from Mr. Mehta. They were although told that this was disputed land and the case was in progress, but its fertility attracted 250 families to buy 1200 acres of land here. Since 1970, 100-125 houses in brick and cement had been made there. The government provided them with electricity and telephone connections for their use. People had been paying revenue tax to the government from day one. Government showed this land as infertile and barren in the case filed against this land in the SC under single ownership; whereas this land is owned by 250 families, which is just the opposite to what was shown in SC. The paper presented by the state govt. in the SC helped the state govt. win the case. SC passed the orders to P N Mehta to relieve the land. Govt. actually after winning this case wanted to take away this land from Sikhs and give it away to the native people of that area. Sikhs are being cheated upon since day one. During formation of the Uttaranchal, Sikhs were promised that Uddam Singh Nagar would stay in UP but it was merged in Uttaranchal. These all are political reasons. On 27 February 2006, once again govt. decided to root out the Sikhs from this land. The govt. took help from the police and the Para military forces encircled the houses with bulldozers. Along with this they also moved the tractors over the standing crop, which was legally wrong. All these things happened with the flip of an eye left the Sikh farmers astonished. Escorts Farms was looking more like a police cantonment now. People were given very less time to take out their belongings. Many houses were destroyed with the belongings inside. When the media came to know about it, it revealed the entire story to the whole world. This gave relief to the people but no action was taken. On 4th January, 2006, the govt. again started demolishing the houses without considering the feelings of the people. Every man or person is emotionally attached to his home. Seeing the destruction, these people couldn't stop themselves and entered into a fight with the police which left these hapless people injured. There was a palatial house on these farms, whose owner requested that his house not be destroyed but instead used as government property. The simple reason was that the family could come back at times and have a look at it. No heed was paid to their requests and the house was brought down mercilessly in front of their helpless eyes. Through media, this news spread like wildfire and started getting responses from all across. It became a political agenda now. Every political party tried to divert the people towards them but the prevalent anger in the people made their efforts unsuccessful. A local MLA intervened and arranged for relief to be given to the people by the Central and Punjab Governments. People refused to take any help from the govt. Instead of the situation, a political party from Punjab put up a tent to help protect the people from the biting cold in the winters. During the entire episode, a loss of about 1.25 crores took place in which about 500 acres of crop was destroyed that included Peas (100 acres); Potato (50 acres); Wheat (150 acres). About 23 houses were completely destroyed in return of which the govt. agreed to pay 62.5 lakhs of rupees (as against the already mentioned 1.25 crores). In this destruction, where 23 families were finished, another lot of domestic animals and milch cattle died. Al his happened in the tehsil of Kashipur which included the villages of Dohari; Vakeel; Pakhewala; Kharmasa and Ramnagar. The most interesting thing is that even after destroying everything, there is still electricity connection in the place. After this incident, people here became united and made one Action Committee. People from political parties and the ones who had political were made the members of this committee. Due to some action taken by this committee itself, the govt. has agreed to give 3.125 acres of land per family. The people are not satisfied by this decision of the committee. |
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