Govt caters to realtors but not poor: Farmers

Seek regularisation of bagair hukum land; hundreds of protesters arrested, released

Members of the Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha (KPRS) in both districts staged protests, demanding sites and houses under various housing schemes for the homeless on Monday.

Chintamani

The protesters laid siege to the taluk office in the town, forcing the employees to stop the work and exit the office before locking it from outside.

“We shall not relent till our demands are fulfilled,” said C Gopinath, secretary of the Sangha district unit.

“The parties that come to power have failed to provide the facilities to the needy and deserving. They chant the mantra of ‘development’, but do not act on their promises to ensure welfare of the underprivileged,” he added.

Stating that the divide between the rich and the poor has been ever increasing, Gopinath said: “The government is keen on acquiring land to create land bank and distribute them to industries and the rich. While the poor continue to live a life
of destitute without a decent shelter.”

He also said the acquisition of farm land for industries will only aggravate the food crisis and the worst-affected will be the poor who are now burdened with the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities. He alleged that the government is robbing farmers of their fertile land to help the industrialists.

“As many as 3,334 applications have been submitted under form 53, seeking cultivation certificate. The government has not yet formed the land clearance committee. Survey numbers have not been mentioned on the cultivation certificates distributed to the applicants, thereby rendering them unable to use the land,” he said.

The government should extend the deadline for submitting applications for regularising bagair hukum land; land clearance committees should be formed at the taluk levels; and farmers’ land should not be acquired for non-agricultural purposes, he said, listing their other demands.

Kolar

The Jail Bharo protest was organised outside the tahsildar’s office in the City.
The members of the Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha demanded that all applications submitted under forms 50 and 53 should be reviewed and cleared.

Taluk level land distribution committees should be instructed to fulfill the work, they added.

“Families belonging to the economically backward classes are living without proper residence on government land in rural and urban areas.

Their cases should be legitimised and the people should be given the title deeds,” the protesters demanded, adding, “A law should passed to legitimise the residences of the poor, constructed on dry land on the outskirts of villages, to prevent damage from floods.”

Malur

Activists of the Sangha staged a demonstration in front of the taluk office, seeking the regularisation of bagair hukum and forest land cultivation.

KPRS taluk president Araleri Munishamegowda said the State Government should provide houses to the homeless. “The Government should issue title deeds to those who have built houses on Government lands in rural and urban areas,” he added.

Bagepalli

Hundreds of agricultural labourers who staged a jail bharo in the taluk were arrested by the police and released later on Monday. They were protesting to demand housing sites and land. A protest procession was made from the Sundaraiah Bhavan in the town to the taluk office.

Addressing protesters, former legislator and CPM State Secretary G V Srirama Reddy said that a total of 73 lakh applications have been submitted to the government seeking sites of which 23,000 applications are relevant to Bagepalli and Gudibande.

He wanted the government to fix housing subsidies to Rs two lakh to rural areas and Rs three lakh to people living in urban areas.

“The State has had three chief ministers in the four-and-half-years of BJP’s rule but none have addressed the problems of homeless people,” he said. The successive chief ministers have failed to provide houses or sites to the needy, he added.

Reddy further said that the government has not initiated any action to recover 34,000 acres of land encroached by land mafias in and around Bangalore as reported by the AT Ramaswamy Committee.

Among legislators, some 80 are allegedly involved in the land mafia, 30 in the liquor mafia and 48 in mining mafia. “The government should look into this,” he said and described both the BJP and Congress as corrupt parties.