45 years on, families displaced for Beas-Sutlej canal await land rights
Nearly 45 years after being displaced due to the Beas-Sutlej Link Canal Project in 1979, five families of Malhanu village in Balh tehsil of Mandi district continue to fight for the ownership rights of the land they were promised as compensation.
Relocated and given a 36 bighas land, the families have held possession for decades but have yet to receive official ownership. The case has bounced from one Deputy Commissioner to another over the years, but no final decision has been made.
BR Kondal, convener of the Jan Samadhan Kendra, raised the issue, highlighting that the families’ land ownership files have shuffled between various Deputy Commissioners without a resolution. “It’s absurd that despite the passage of decades, these files have been neither approved nor rejected,” he added.
The displaced families, including Parmanand, Lala Ram, Chamaru Ram, Ram Lal, and Maniram, said that now they find themselves caught in a bureaucratic loop, with the third generation of their descendants fighting for justice. They urged Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to look into the matter and do the needful to sort their long-pending issue.
The Beas Sutlej Link Canal was developed to supply water to the Dehar Powerhouse project in Mandi, and hundreds of bighas in the area have been irrigated with the help of the canal water. Besides, the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), which manages the canal, generates substantial revenue from the hydroelectric power project, yet the displaced families have not been granted the rightful ownership of their land.
Kondal clarified that there was no legal obstacle, such as the Forest Conservation Act, blocking the land transfer and that a Supreme Court ruling on the matter had already been shared with the authorities concerned. However, a decision was yet to be taken.
The affected families have limited resources to pursue the case in higher courts but they hope that DC Apoorv Devgan will take decisive action. Kondal has appealed to Devgan to approve the cases so that these families could have their legal rights.
