New Delhi|Feb, 2: Chairman Democratic Azad Party (DAP) and former Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday this week called upon Home Minister Amit Shah and apprised him about the situation of serious unrest and uncertainty prevailing among the people at large in Jammu & Kashmir after the follow up action on circular of eviction issued by Jammu & Kashmir Government as a result of which all Deputy Commissioners to remove the encroachments on state land including Roshni and Kacharai.
Confirming his meeting with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah Azad took to micro blogging social networking site twitter and said ” Met Union Home Minister Amit Shah ji regarding land eviction issues in J&K. Aprised him about the prevailing unrest and uncertainty among the people who are forced to vacate the properties which are otherwise recognised by successive regimes”. In his yet another tweet Azad said “Amit Shah ji assured me no small land holders who constructed houses will be touched ”
Azad has conveyed it to Home Minister that the majority of occupants who are holding small lands and have constructed houses for the last few decades are migrants and are mostly victims of militancy, as well as victims of abnormal situations arisen from time to time, being a border state. He also told the Union Home Minister that origin of these shelters/residential houses on state-kacharai and Roshni lands appears to have taken place first in 1947 and then in the 1962 & 1971 war period, and subsequently during the post militancy period. He also told the Home Minister ‘it is a fact that the governments provided road connectivity, supply of water & electricity, schools, anganwadi centres and other welfare schemes including health related facilities to these houses from time to time which implicitly indicates that successive state governments in a way have recognized these constructions’.
Azad urged the Home Minister that at least poor people having small holdings of land and houses should be spared from the eviction drive. The Home Minister assured Azad that small land holders will not be harassed . It is in place to mention here that two weeks earlier Azad had taken up the same issue with LG Manoj Sinha also, who too had assured to do the needful with cogent land policy to small land holders sympathetically.