Farmers’ panel stages dharna at Chappar Chiri

Mohali, May 28

Members of the Kisan Hit Sangharsh Committee Punjab organised a protest dharna at Chappar Chiri on Saturday against the infringement of statutory/legal rights of land owners in villages of the state in the guise of removing illegal occupation of ‘panchayat’ lands by the official machinery.

Addressing protesters the spokesman of the committee Jasbir Singh Dhaliwal said, “Landowners/farmers are being denied our proprietary rights over lands, which are owned by them in respective villages of Punjab. Unfortunately, for reasons that are best known to the official machinery of the government a highly publicised drive to remove these so called encroachments’ has been initiated by brazenly violating laws of the land and constitutional Bench judgements of the Supreme Court of India.”

Dhaliwal said, “Since the judgement of the Supreme Court some kind of an aggressive campaign of calumny and falsehoods are being propagated to deny our enjoyment and legal possession/ownership of our lands through brute force and propaganda.”

“We have been requesting the state government to remove all impediments in our legal and statutory rights and restore all our proprietary lands in each village of Punjab so that we can continue with our ownership and cultivation of these properties,” Dhaliwal added.

“An appropriate legislation needs to be enacted so that farmers/land owners do not waste their time and money in contesting litigation before courts of law,” said Dhaliwal.