The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind on Saturday welcomed the Supreme Court providing interim relief against the Uttarakhand High court's decision to remove encroachments from 29 acres of land claimed by the railways in Haldwani.
Talking to reporters at the organisation's headquarters here, Jamaat's national vice-president Mohammad Salim Engineer alleged that efforts were being made to give a communal colour to the Haldwani case for political gains.
"An attempt is being made to create an impression that people of one community are encroachers and, therefore, they should be removed, whereas both Muslims and Hindus live at the disputed site in Haldwani," he claimed.
Documents of the people who live there were made even before the arrival of railways and the apex court’s order will give them a chance to claim their rights.
Nadeem Khan, secretary of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights, a sister organisation of the Jamaat, alleged that be it Assam or Haldwani, destructive politics is going on in the country to change the political demography.
The railway has identified 4,365 families who it says have encroached on its land. The occupants held protests at Haldwani asserting themselves to be the rightful owners. Nearly 50,000 people, a majority of them Muslims, belonging to more than 4,000 families lived on the disputed land.
Observing that many of the occupants have claimed they have been residing there for more than 50 years, a bench of Justice S K Kaul and A S Oka noted there is a "human angle" to the problem and the authorities have to find a "practical way out".
The apex court issued notices to the railways and the Uttarakhand government, seeking their responses to a batch of pleas challenging the high court order for the removal of encroachments.
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