Lucknow, 21 July: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in a high-level meeting on Monday, directed to take concrete action towards giving legal land ownership rights to the families displaced from East Pakistan (present Bangladesh) and settled in various districts of the state.
CM Yogi said that this is not just a matter of transfer of land, but an opportunity to honour the life struggle of thousands of families who took refuge in India from across the country’s borders and have been waiting for rehabilitation for decades.
He told the officials that these families should be treated with empathy as well as due respect. This is the moral responsibility of the government.
Officials informed that after partition, between 1960 and 1975, thousands of families displaced from East Pakistan were rehabilitated in Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bijnor and Rampur districts of Uttar Pradesh. In the initial years, these families were settled in various villages through transit camps and land was also allotted to them, but due to legal and documentary discrepancies, most of them have not been able to get legal land ownership rights till date.
Chief Minister was informed that in many districts including Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bijnor, families displaced from East Pakistan were settled years ago and agricultural land was also allotted to them. However, due to many administrative and legal complexities like documentary errors over time, land being registered in the name of the forest department, pending process of transfer or not having actual possession of the land, these families have not been able to get legal land ownership rights till date. At some places, displaced people from other states have also been settled, who are still deprived of land ownership.
According to the updated status, while on one hand the families who have been farming for years in many villages have built permanent houses on the land, their names are still not recorded in the revenue records. On the other hand, in some villages, even today those families who were settled there earlier do not actually exist. Many families have occupied the land without following the legal process, which is causing problems.
Yogi said that keeping in mind the cases in which the land was allotted earlier under the Government Grant Act, new options should be explored in the current legal framework, because this Act has been repealed in 2018.
The Chief Minister said that this sensitive effort can prove to be a new hope for the displaced families neglected for decades and open the door to a dignified life. It should not be seen only as rehabilitation, but as “social justice, humanity and national responsibility”.