A Gandhian organisation has threatened to stage a march by the landless poor to Delhi on October 2 to highlight their problems, following which some cabinet ministers have been deputed to mollify the group in Gwalior.
Social justice minister Mukul Wasnik, panchayati raj minister Kishore Chandra Deo, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh and minister of state for industry and commerce
Jyotiraditya Scindia will talk to the activists led by P V Rajagopal, official sources said.
Ekta Parishad, a movement headed by Rajagopal, has announced that people representing different rural communities, especially tribal, landless and small farmers, “will walk in formation together 350 km from Gwalior to New Delhi.”
Rajagopal said the Jan Satyagraha 2012 march campaign is a non-violent walk beginning October 2, and is scheduled to carry on for a month before culminating in New Delhi.
“People will raise the issue about land being a key asset in development and poverty reduction, and that high level of landlessness and deprivation needs to be reduced for achieving positive national and global development,” said the organisation.
“In effect, land and livelihood rights are instrumental to people’s freedom,” it added.
Rajagopal, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week, said Singh has agreed to the demand that the poor be given access to land and the fundamental issue of ‘right to shelter’ be addressed.
“The Prime Minister has assured me that his government will come up with a land reform policy in six months. He has also agreed to make the long-standing demand for right to shelter a fundamental right,” said Rajagopal, who is a member of the Prime Minister-chaired National Council for Land Reforms.
Singh has also agreed to another demand that a land pool should be created in which government land and Bhoodan land recovered from the powerful will be kept for distributing to the landless poor, he said.
