In what appears to be yet another bid to prevent redistribution of surplus land by allocating it to landless tribals in the state, the Uttarakhand government has failed to file a proper affidavit in the High Court. This is related to an ongoing petition filed by Social Development Foundation on the issue of settlement of the land declared Ceiling Surplus. According to state land ceiling laws, the maximum size of an agricultural land holding is 12.5 acres. The excess and surplus land of people with holdings larger than this size was to be reallocated to a variety of backward communities and groups including Adivasis.
The Nainital High Court had asked for the status of land declared ‘surplus’ under the Land Ceiling law. However, the officials have been allegedly twisting and hiding facts, using delay tactics and playing with words in a bid to make a simple matter appear complicated.
Despite a clear warning by the Chief Justice KM Joseph of the Nainital High Court, the state authorities filed the affidavit at the last moment on Tuesday, but it could not be put before the judges because of technical flaws. The Court took a serious note of it and warned the official. A Five Thousand Rupees fine was imposed on the government official to failure to follow the court’s order.
In the initial affidavit, the Uttarakhand government informed the court in its written submission, that not a single tribal was given land in the state since formation of the state. However, now they claim to have given land to 340 Adivasis and that there is not a single Adivasi now who is landless!
In a similar vein, data pertaining to Dalits is not correct either. A petition had been filed challenging the government’s right to redistribute land under a particular act bypassing Sub Section 198 of Section 27 of the Land Ceiling Act. The petition asked the government to redistribute the land in a prioritised manner. The High Court in 2010 actually stood by the petition’s our position and asked the government to settle the land distribution matter accordingly. But the state asserted that it has a right to distribute land as and how it pleases.
Since then, another contempt petition has been filed that went all the way to the Supreme Court before coming back to the High Court. The Lokayukta too had questioned the land redistribution where surplus land was given to powerful people such as upper caste Jat Sikhs from Punjab. The shame of the successive Uttarakhand governments is that, except for the Land redistribution to poor landless including SC-ST-OBCs, the government has allocated land for every other purposes like SIDCUL, government offices, roads, buildings, orchards etc. It appears powerful lobbies including real estate developers and industrialists hold sway over the administration and manage to thwart every attempt made to redistribute land in a more socially just and environmentally responsible manner.