Congress plans statewide protest against land pooling policy, Mohali dharna today
The Punjab Congress on Sunday decided to launch a statewide agitation against the AAP government’s land pooling policy, beginning with a major dharna in Mohali tomorrow.
According to party leaders, the plan includes a series of rallies across Punjab and political congregations in every village where the government is supposed to acquire land under the initiative.
The Mohali event is the second major programme being held by the Congress in recent days after a rally in Ludhiana, where a massive 24,000 acres of agriculture land is set to be acquired under the initiative.
Reacting to it, state’s ruling AAP accused Opposition parties of misleading farmers.
“To counter the misleading campaign, AAP is reaching out to farmers and the villagers concerned to explain benefits of the policy under which there will be forcible acquisition,” said AAP spokesperson Neel Garg.
Soon after its launch in May this year, the policy has faced political backlash. Farmer outfits too have decided to launch a state-wide stir against it from July 30 after Opposition parties extended support to them.
The cash-strapped government so far maintained that the initiative would spur urban development, with farmers and landowners getting plots of higher value than the cost of actual land contributed by them.
Under it, the government has planned to acquire over 65,000 acres, which will be utilised to develop townships near several cities, including industrial centre Ludhiana.
The policy envisaged “complete voluntary participation” by landowners.
However, the scheme faced criticism as the Congress, BJP and the SAD accused the government of colluding with developers to deprive farmers of their fertile land.
They alleged that it would result in large-scale corruption, with ruling AAP leaders making money out of the acquisition process.
‘An attempt to escape compensation norms’
Commenting over the issue, state Congress chief Amrinder Raja Warring on Sunday said his party would stage sit-ins at all places where the government announced to acquire land.
Warring said the government intended to escape its responsibilities under the pro-farmer Land Acquisition Act that was enacted by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in 2013.
“Under that law, the government is bound to pay one and a half times the market value of the land, along with rehabilitation compensation and resettlement arrangements,” he said.
Warring alleged that through the land pooling policy, the government aimed to “grab land of farmers without spending a penny in compensation, only to sell it to private companies and fulfil its populist promises in the last year of its term”.
Senior Congress leader and former minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said the party would demand a rollback of the “anti-farmer policy”.
He said apart from the Warring and the leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly —Partap Singh Bajwa — several party MPs and MLAs would participate in the Mohali event.
Meeting on Tarn Taran Assembly bypoll today
The state Congress chief has called a meeting of party leaders from Tarn Taran and Amritsar districts to discuss shortlisting of probable candidates for the Tarn Taran Assembly bypoll, necessitated by the death of AAP MLA Kashmir Singh Sohal. The Election Commission is yet to declare the schedule of the Assembly bypoll.
Punjab