Farmers worried after Allahabad HC orders inquiry into defence land

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Locals said there was no clear separation between Nagla Nagli and Nagla Sagpur villages. “All three villages have the same pradhan and are counted as the same area,” Amit Yadav, a resident, said.

Ajit Singh, the petitioner in the case, said this was this ambiguity that has allowed the IAF land to disappear. “The IAF acquired this land but only as a buffer zone for its shooting and bombing range after independence… It was after this that some people began to usurp the land. There was also ambiguity on whether these villages were to be in Haryana or Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

Singh, who is a resident of Rohillapur village which borders Nagla Nagli, said that at different times the acquired land was in both Haryana and UP. “In the 1970s, there was a tussle between UP and Haryana on which state this land belonged to. Nagla Nagli and Nagla Behrampur were created on the UP border in Haryana as well.

In all this, records of the acquired land from every level, be it the patwari, the surveyors and the district administration, have disappeared.

In Silarpur for instance, where the IAF also acquired land, there are records of the past five decades. But for Nagla Nagli and Nagla Sagpur, they mysteriously disappeared and in the past decade the land was sold at high rates,” Singh claimed.