Pong Dam oustees urge Kangra MP’s help for resettlement in Rajasthan

A delegation of the Pong Dam Oustees Samiti, led by its president Hans Raj Choudhary, met Kangra Lok Sabha MP Rajiv Bhardwaj at Jassur last evening and submitted a memorandum to him seeking a permanent solution to their 55-year-old problems regarding their resettlement in Rajasthan.

The delegation also apprised Bhardwaj of the ground reality regarding their rehabilitation after their prime land in Kangra district was acquired for the construction of the Pong Dam in 1970. Bhardwaj listened to the displaced people and assured them that he would raise their issues in coordination with Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur in the upcoming winter session of Parliament. He also assured them that he would also raise their resettlement issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the memorandum, the samiti said that in the name of rehabilitation of the Pong Dam oustees in Rajasthan, 3.50 lakh acres had been reserved for the allotment of murabbas (land) to the displaced people in Sri Ganganagar district but it was reduced to 2.25 lakh acres following an agreement between the then chief ministers of Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan in 1982. A murabba is an allotted land for which ownership rights are rendered to the allottee after 20 years.

The samiti said that from 1972 to 1980, 9,600 murabbas were allotted to the oustees, who were to be accorded ownership rights after 20 years in 1992, but the then Rajasthan Government issued a notification and Section 6A was added to the Land Allotment Rules, 1992, which annulled 6,000 murabbas allotted to the displaced Pong Dam oustees.

The samiti lamented that on the pretext of Section 6A in the Land Allotment Rules, 1992, the land mafia in Rajasthan deprived the oustees of their 1,188 murabbas. It stated that the affected people had been running from pillar to post to save 1,188 murabbas allotted to them in Sri Ganganagar district in Rajasthan while encroachers and the land mafia grabbed their land. “The Pong Dam oustees had approached the Supreme Court against the Rajasthan Government’s notification, which was declared null and void in the 1996 judgment in favour of the petitioners,” it stated in the memorandum.

The samiti alleged that the Rajasthan Government was adamant on not honouring the Supreme Court’s judgment of 1996, which had annulled Section A of the Land Allotment Rules, 1992, and the affected people could not get their 1,188 murabbas back for which they had been struggling for the past 29 years.

The samiti stated the displaced people were keeping their fingers crossed after the Centre intervened to provide a permanent solution to resettle them in Rajasthan.