Landless villagers start building pucca houses

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 6

Pendu Mazdoor Union Punjab’s state press secretary Kashmir Singh Ghugshore and district president Hansraj Pabwan, met ADC (Development), Jatinder Jorwal, on the issue to allot the residential plots to landless labourers and famers.

The union activists said they would start building ‘Pucca’ houses on the panchayat land to ensure the landless farmers’ right of residential plots.

Activists of the union said from April 15, 2013, onwards, hundreds of labourers were moving from pillar to post to get free residential plots.

The administration has been claiming that plots will be allotted within a week. The officials concerned said on the orders of the Deputy Commissioner and the state government the ADC (D) had ordered the Block Development Officers to implement the same.

They said labourers, hailing from villages, had acquired the rights to the gram sabha in over a dozen villages after a long struggle and got the resolutions or the allocations of residential plots to labourers passed.

They said the action – to be taken in a week – hasn’t been implemented even after the passing of over 68 months. The bureaucrats and landlords of the village were working in tandem.

The activists of the union said due to the pressure on the government from the moneyed village landlords, the poor labourers had yet not received their lands.

They said the landless villagers had started the construction on their own, adding that if the administration tried to stop the process, it would be responsible for the consequences.