The Uttar Pradesh government led by CM Yogi Adityanath is set to grant land ownership rights to Hindu refugees displaced from former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) due to persecution by Islamists. The UP government is going to grant landownership rights to 2,196 families settled across 25 villages in the Pilibhit district.
The 62-year-long wait is finally going to end after a recent directive by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. The decision came after a high-level meeting regarding the same was chaired by CM Yogi Adityanath. Reports say that only formal procedures remain after the chief minister gave the relevant departments instructions.
On Wednesday (23rd July), Gyanendra Singh, the district magistrate of Pilibhit, said that the administration will start the procedure after receiving the final guidelines.
Notably, even as the government gave these families land in 1960 for housing and farming, they were never given legal ownership. They were also denied access to government social programs since they lacked legal rights. This was the case not only in Pilibhit but also in Bijnor, Rampur, and Lakhimpur Kheri. Despite land allotment, the Hindu refugee families from Bangladesh could not attain formal title of the lands they resided on or cultivated, as there were either legal disputes due to clerical errors, land was under the Forest Department, missing records or a lack of mutation.
However, after CM Yogi Adityanath’s intervention, ownership documents will shortly be provided to verified refugee households.
The officials informed CM Yogi that the process of granting landownership rights to valid refugees could not be expedited due to the legal confusion that arose after repealing the Government Grants Act in 2018. Due to this, there was no legal method to validate old land allotments. However, CM Yogi instructed the officials to find another way, saying that the “law exists to serve the people, not to trap them in misery.”
Official data indicates that 1,466 applicants’ verification reports have already been forwarded to the state government out of the 2,196 affected households living in 25 villages in Pilibhit. The action will benefit refugees in over 25 villages in the tehsils of Kalinagar and Puranpur, in addition to Tatarganj, Bamanpur, Baila, Siddh Nagar, Shastri Nagar, and Nehru Nagar.
