Team Clarion
JAMMU — Selective action against poor, indigent and homeless people especially Muslims in the name of encroachments to the exclusion of privileged classes is not only reprehensible but amounts to a sin of the highest order, former state minister and senior Aam Aadmi Party leader, Harsh Dev Singh, has said.
Addressing a press conference in Jammu, especially in wake of the ongoing draconian land order issued by the Jammu government, Singh blamed the administration for facilitating the encroachment of palatial mansions beside state lands, forest lands, Jammu Development Authority (JDA) and municipal lands by ministers, MLAs and other BJP leaders while evicting the poor and bulldozing their houses. AAP would vociferously oppose the double standards of the present dispensation, he was quoted by media reports as saying.
Singh said several BJP leaders have usurped public lands and government properties besides having regularised state lands under Roshni scheme with no action initiated against them.
“BJP leaders had illegally occupied government bungalows without any entitlement but the present government rather than evicting them was dismantling the residential units of poor people constructed decades back on the pretext of vacation of state lands,” Singh said.
Making a particular mention of some of the prime residential colonies and other concrete structures developed by powerful politicians by encroachment and consequent destruction of forests, Singh dared the regime to retrieve the forest land from the ex-ministers, MLAs, MLCs and other bureaucrats in areas like Bhatindi, Sunjwan, Chowadi, Nagrota, Bajalta, etc. in the vicinity of Jammu city.
Describing the selective action against poor and destitute people as ‘cowardice’, Singh asked the regime to ensure the vacation of land under illegal possession of land mafia and influential people before evicting the poor, homeless people.
Authorities have unleashed the drive to demolish the houses of Muslims in several areas of Jammu region in the name of an anti-encroachment campaign.
Photo: Former state minister and AAP leader Harsh Devi Singh addressing a press conference in Jammu.
