Farmers to move court for FIR against PWD engineers

PILIBHIT: Two farmers of Pilibhit district are going to submit a complaint at the chief judicial magistrate’s court on Monday seeking directions to the police to file an FIR against three senior engineers of PWD who allegedly occupied their land and attempted to crush them under an earth-mover. Prior to this, the farmers had filed complaints to district police chief but claimed were not answered.The matter is related to land acquisition for the construction of an 11.2 km long bypass.
The lawyer representing the two farmers, Prem Shankar Sharma, said he would be filing the complaint against the PWD engineers on Monday under section 156 (3) of Cr.PC (Criminal Procedure Code) to seek court’s direction for lodging an FIR against them after investigation.
The bypass project was sanctioned by the PWD authorities on March 17, 2016 to link Pilibhit-Basti national highway with Bind-Lipulekh highway on the outskirts of Pilibhit city. For building the highway, 33.6 hectare land of farmers belonging to 14 villages along its proposed route was needed.
While farmers of 11 villages consented to accept the quantum of compensation equal to 200% value over the prevalent circle rate. The farmers of the remaining three villages demanded four times the value of the circle rates as compensation for their land.
These farmers had also moved Allahabad High Court in November with the plea that as per the land acquisition Act, urban lands were eligible for compensation on a par with 200% of the prevailing circle rate while in case of rural land, there was a provision of providing farmers with four times the value of the circle rate. The high court on November 23 had directed the commissioner of Bareilly division to settle the matter within six weeks. The copy of this order was served on the commissioner by the petitioner on December 5.
According to farmers, Ram Ratan and Daljeet Singh, who own agricultural land at Ludhpura village, the PWD took possession of their arts of their land measuring 0.53 and 0.84 hectares respectively and excavated mud from there for building the road though the rights of their land had not been transferred as the settlements for award of compensation were still pending with the commissioner.
In their complaint, the farmers alleged that on December 10 when they reached their lands, executive engineer, PWD, Pradeep Rastogi, assistant engineer Vimal Kumar and junior engineer Anoop Kumar were present, directing the JCB machine operator to excavate mud from their land. When the farmers opposed it, Rastogi allegedly instructed the JCB operator to mow them down.
The farmers claimed that they had to run for cover as the JCB operator drove towards them.
CO, Pilibhit, Anurag Darshan, said he was not aware about the farmers’ complaint. He added that the matter was liable to be dealt with by a revenue court and not by police.