Sikh farmers settled in Gujarat have accused the Narendra Modi government of harassing them by taking drastic measures to take over their agricultural land cultivated by them for decades.
A delegation of these ryots, some of them born in Kutch district of Gujarat, has gone to their home states of Punjab and Haryana to sensitise the two state governments about the gravity of the situation after the then Kutch collector froze their agriculture accounts, saying they were holding the land illegally.
The Gujarat government said the action was taken under the provisions of the 1972 Kutch Area Tenancy Act and the Gujarat Tenancy Act that prohibited tillers from outside Gujarat to own farm-land in the state. Around 30 non-Gujarat agriculturists who have been living in Kutch since 1966 had approached the Gujarat High Court in 2008.
Much to their joy, the court, in a landmark judgement in June last, ruled that a farmer from anywhere in India could purchase agricultural land in Gujarat.
The court quashed a 1972 state government circular that barred farmers from outside Gujarat to own land in the state as an agriculturist.
But the Sikh farmers are still worried and decided to take their case to Punjab and Haryana ministers, Shiromani Akali Dal leaders and other powerful authorities in their home states as the Gujarat government has now challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court.
Tej Ram Rania, an affected farmer, told Khaleej Times before leaving for Punjab on Saturday that the fact that the Modi administration had moved the apex court meant that it was bent on throwing out Sikh ryots from Gujarat.
According to Rania, a land mafia in Gujarat had conspired to grab their agricultural land and the Sikh farmers had been barred from meeting Modi. He said the land of Punjabis and Haryanvis was being purchased by land mafia and politicians at throwaway prices.
The farmers with permanent ownership of the land have all the relevant official documents such as the residence proof, land ownership papers, voter’s identity cards, ration cards, electricity bills, mortgage deeds, and nationality and birth certificates of their children to make a claim.
Sikhs from Punjab and Haryana went to Gujarat in 1965-66 when Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then prime minister, had given priority to farmers from Punjab to settle in the border areas for security purpose.
“However, now the Gujarat government is bent upon snatching their lands under the provisions of an old and abandoned Bombay Act, 1958, saying they are from other states,” said Raina, adding that in the last two years, the Kutch district collector had frozen the lands of more than 1,000 Sikh and Haryanvi farmer families and had taken all records into his custody.
