CHANDIGARH/ROHTAK: Putting an end to three-decade-long wait of the families of Kashmiri Pandits who, between 1991 and 1993, had purchased land in Sector 2 of Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district, the Haryana government on Thursday announced ‘Vachanpurti’ scheme to allot plots to 182 families in Bahadurgarh.
Making this announcement during a state-level programme, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar also handed over the allotment letters to some of the beneficiaries who were specially invited to attend the programme, while the rest of the families got the said letters from other officials.
“Today is a historic day in Haryana’s history as the wait of families of Kashmiri Pandits who had purchased land in Congress’s tenure during 1991 and 1993 has finally ended today. In these 30 years, they must have even lost the hope of getting their land which was sold to them without even telling its disputed status,” Khattar said.
He added that after making some suitable amendments in 1997, some of the plots were released in favour of Kashmiri Pandits. But the families who did not get the land then had to wait for almost three decades.
“On April 6, 2022, after verification and required measurement of these plots being recorded at that time, the allotment process has already been done through a draw and today the letters to 182 families have been distributed... some of the families have already got their plots. Thus, through this entire process, promise made to these 209 families has been fulfilled,” he added.
The chief minister said this ‘Vachanpurti Mission’ is a befitting reply to the claims of the opposition alleging that the present state government had stopped financial aid of Rs 5,000 to the Kashmiri Pandit families. “I would like to clarify that the scheme of giving Rs 5,000 as financial aid to these families was not started by us, it was Congress only which had framed these rules that any family would get the said amount for a period of five years. As per our official data, right now out of the total five such families, only one is getting this aid because it has not yet completed the five-year rule, while the rest have completed their five-year norm,” said the CM.
Thanking the CM for allotting land which they had purchased almost 30 years back, the beneficiaries who were specially invited to attend the programme said that in 1990, because of the atrocities committed against them they had to vacate their houses overnight. “In 1991-92, we came to Bahadurgarh... purchased a small piece of land hoping to restart our lives. But it took almost three decades for us to get possession of it. We can’t express our happiness and gratitude towards the chief minister in words because of whom we got our land back,” said one of the beneficiaries.
On Tuesday, the Punjab and Haryana high court had ordered Haryana to hand over land in Bahadurgarh to Kashmiri Pandits who had been bought it between 1991 and 1993. On Wednesday, the Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) had given provisional allotment to 184 plot holders in Rohtak.
HSVP Rohtak estate officer Shweta Suhag said the Kashmiri Pandits had bought residential plots from a private owner, but the state government had later acquired the land and allotted it to Huda (old name of HSVP). The HSVP found that the formalities to give plots to Kashmiri Pandits could not be completed as there was a mismatch between the land bought by them and revenue records. Suhag said the delay was due to the time taken to rectify revenue records. She said there were 212 Kashmiri Pandits who had sought allotment from HSVP and 28 were given allotment in 2016.
(With inputs by Sat Singh from Rohtak)
