Srinagar: Democratic Azad Party (DAP) chairman and the former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday urged the Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to issue a written order to direct authorities not to trouble poor and needy people having small land holdings.
He, however, stated that his party had decided to call off protests against the land eviction drive after getting assurances from the Union Home Minister and LG Sinha.
Azad said that the ongoing anti-encroachment drive by the government was triggering chaos and anxiety among the common people. “There is complete chaos on ground since the authorities are not abiding by the directions of LG Manoj Sinha and are mostly troubling the poor.
Who shall we believe? The Raj Bhawan says the poor will be spared. The Divisional Commissioner’s Office issues different directions while on the ground district authorities have different yardsticks to remove encroachments,” he said while addressing a gathering of party workers in Srinagar.
The former Chief Minister said that they wanted a written assurance from the LG Manoj Sinha clearly mentioning the parameters for the anti-encroachment drive.
He said after meeting Union Home minister Amit Shah in Delhi and later LG J&K assuring that land would be retrieved only from mafias, the DAP was calling off the protests.
“We have decided to call off the protests for now since we received assurance from the highest authorities. Let’s watch and see how things are unfolding on the ground,” he said.
DAP was holding protests across the Union Territory ever since the order of land eviction was issued. Azad, however, said that his party would not stand by the rich people who encroached huge swathes of land and built mansions over it.
“Those who have captured small pieces of land and have built homes or shops to feed their families must not be touched by the authorities. We can’t snatch their livelihood or render them homeless when it is the responsibility of the state to think and work for the welfare of people,” he said.
Azad said that the tribal communities like Gujjar and Bakerwal were facing the worst conditions with this anti-encroachment drive as the authorities were snatching from them the land allotted for grazing their cattle and herds.
“These communities have been provided land to graze the cattle or herds for decades. But now the government in the name of kahcharai encroachment is forcing them to vacate. Where shall they go? It is an inhuman and anti-poor approach which is not acceptable to us at all,” Azad added.
He said that hundreds of families during the peak of militancy from Chenab and Kashmir valleys were forced to migrate to relatively safer areas in Jammu and some of the families especially Kashmiri Pandits sold all their assets back home to buy plots in Jammu.
“They built homes in Jammu to escape militancy. Later, the successive regimes regularised the areas and provided them with basic facilities like water, electricity and roads. Now the present government says they are all illegally settled and want to remove them. This can’t happen and we will not allow it,” he said.
Azad, however, welcomed the statement of Manoj Sinha that the land would be retrieved from rich people only.
Prominent leaders who were present on the occasion were Taj Mohiuddin DAP treasurer, G M Saroori vice chairman, Mohd Amin Bhatt provincial president, Haji Abdul Rashid general secretary, Gulzar Wani zonal president, Salman Nizami chief spokesperson, Peer Bilal zonal president, Mushtaq Khanday, Mir Altaf, Kaiser Jin, Shafiq Shabnam, Amir Rasool, Arif Maqbool, Wasim Yaqoob, Heena Sultan, Ashiq Irfan, Javid Hakeem, Mohd Syeed Shah, Dr Asif Khanday, Ghulam Nabi Bhatt, Yousef Sultan besides others.