The former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda on Saturday appealed to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah against evicting poor landless farmers who had encroached upon “negligible” portion of government land for their livelihood.
In a letter to Mr. Siddaramaiah, he expressed his concern over notices being issued by revenue officials to farmers cultivating on 0.3 to 0.5 acres of government land, in spite of provision in the Revenue Act to regularise them.
Expressing solidarity with the ongoing demonstration by freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy against the alleged government apathy to clear encroachments on public land, Mr. Gowda regretted that despite accepting a report of the Joint Legislative Committee on encroachment of government land in and around Bangalore by A.T. Ramaswamy, the government had not implemented its recommendations.
Even after admitting on the floor of the House that it had not approved the report and recommendations of the Task Force for Recovery of Public Land, headed by V. Balasubramanian, the government was keen on evicting landless farmers who had encroached meagre portion of public land, instead of acting against “real estate sharks” who had encroached upon vast stretches of government land, he said.
Urging Mr. Siddaramaiah to stop action against landless farmers forthwith, Mr. Gowda cautioned of launching an agitation if the government continued to “harass” landless farmers. “In fact, I wanted to participate in the ongoing dharna by Mr. Doreswamy. But, I don’t want people to paint political colour for the action,” he said.
NICEMr. Gowda expressed his reservation over the timeframe fixed for the House Committee headed by Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T.B. Jayachandra to look into the alleged violation of the frame work agreement by Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE), which is implementing Bangalore–Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project.
He said, “Three months given to the committee is not sufficient to investigate the gamut of issues related to the project, which has a history of 18 years.”
