CTA team meets govt officials, seeks renewal of land leases
Senior representatives from the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) had recently met with Himachal Pradesh Government officials to discuss the renewal of land leases and lease amount for both revenue and forestland occupied by Tibetan settlements in state.
The meeting was held after Sikyong Penpa Tsering’s recent visit to Shimla, where he engaged with the state authorities and also met Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu over various issues affecting Tibetan communities.
Sources said that Chief Secretary Prabodh Saxena, Additional Chief Secretary (Forest) Kamlesh Kumar Pant; Principal Secretary (Urban Development) Devesh Kumar, Additional Secretary (Revenue) Balwan Chand and other senior officials attended the meeting. From the CTA, Palden Dhondup, Secretary of the CTA’s Department of Home; Tsewang Phuntsok, Chief Representative Officer (CRO) of Shimla, newly appointed CRO Lhakpa Tsering; and Deputy Secretary Ngodup Waser were present in the meeting.
The sources said discussions in the meeting primarily focused on lease renewal and proposed lease rent for the settlements situated on both revenue and forest land. One of the key issues was the lease renewal of the Dalhousie Phuntsokling settlement, which falls under urban development. The department had proposed a lease of Rs 1.89 crore for 10 years. Another case discussed was the Sangye Choeling Tibetan residential area, with a proposed lease of around Rs 40 lakh.
The sources said that CTA representatives appealed for a reduction in the lease rents. Following deliberations, the Chief Secretary directed officials from the concerned departments to submit the relevant proposals and agreed to forward the cases to the state Cabinet.
The talks also extended to other Tibetan settlements across the state, including those in Kangra, Mandi and Sirmaur districts, where similar land and lease concerns persist. The issue of land lease renewals has long been a source of uncertainty for Tibetan refugee communities residing in Himachal.
The sources said that there were about 200 cases of encroachment on forestland against Tibetans in the McLeodganj area. The Himachal High Court and National Green Tribunal had ordered the department to remove the encroachments on forest land.
However, the Tibetan government-in-exile lobbied with the Himachal Government as well as the union government seeking relief from removal of encroachments. The Tibetan government-in-exile has been maintaining that relief should be provided to Tibetan encroachers as they are not allowed to buy land in India.
In 2015, the Union Home Secretary had written to the Himachal Government against the removal of Tibetan habitations.
Besides common Tibetans, the Tibetan government-in-exile had also been facing cases in various courts for either encroaching upon government land or benami transactions. Many monasteries of Tibetans and Tibetan Children Villages (TCV) had allegedly been brought up either on the land purchased through illegal transactions or on forestland.
The sources said that about 70 properties of the Tibetan government-in-exile had either been brought up either on the land purchased through illegal transactions or forestland and the CTA wanted the government to regularise them.
Punjab