Chandigarh, June 15
The SAD today announced that it would take up the issue of displacement of around 1,000 Sikh farmers from four different places in UP with CM Yogi Adityanath and would also approach Home Minister Amit Shah to ensure that the farmers weren’t subjected to any injustice.
AAP slams Yogi
The state AAP chief and MP Bhagwant Mann said, “Thousands of Sikh farmers living in the UP’s Terai region for 70 years now are being evicted by the Yogi government. It is being done the same way the BJP government had displaced Punjabi farmers from Gujarat’s Kutch region.”
At a press conference here, senior party leader and former MP Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra said SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal had formed a three member committee, which included MPs Balwinder Singh Bhundur and Naresh Gujral and him, to take up the issue with the UP government. The party’s core committee had also resolved to ensure justice to the affected Sikh families of UP.
Professor Chandumajra said the families were being forcefully displaced at Bijnore, Lakhimpur Kheri, Rampur and Nanakmata.
He said: “The SAD expresses solidarity with the affected farmers, most of whom had settled in Uttar Pradesh after being displaced during the Partition in 1947.”
He said at Champatpur in Bijnore and Rananpur in Lakhimpur Khiri, the farmers had cultivated barren land to make it fertile. And now when the time had come for them to enjoy the fruits of their labour, they were being ousted.
Taking cognisance of reported attempts by the Uttar Pradesh government to displace more than 30,000 Sikh farmers by taking over their land, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday said he would take up the issue with his counterpart Yogi Adityanath and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Amarinder Singh expressed concern over media reports suggesting that the Sikh families were being displaced after living in Uttar Pradesh for three generations.
"If the reports were correct, it was undoubtedly a matter of worry," said the Chief Minister, adding any such act was against the federal structure of India and its Constitutional polity, which gave every Indian the freedom to live in any part of the country.
As per available accounts, these families had been settled in the districts of Rampur, Bijnor and Lakhimpur for three generations now, and had even received proprietorship rights from the Uttar Pradesh government back in 1980, said Amarinder Singh, questioning the rationale behind the reported attempts to dislocate them and push them out of their homes.
— IANS & TNS