For the distraught women farmers, the grim realities are staring them in the face. One of them said, “What will we eat if our lands are snatched from us? How will we produce food? Our children will die of hunger and we’re ready to commit suicide if our demands are not met.”
Aman Zutshi
R.S.Pura: Dispossessed of their lands, several farmers including women, have staged a protest sit-in protest in R.S.Pura, border area of Jammu district, alleging the Jammu and Kashmir administration under the Lieutenant Governor is forcibly snatching their small landholdings and ‘declaring it state property’.
Ousted from their lands and deprived of their sole means of livelihood, scores of farmers from Miran Sahib’s Ban Sultan and Nandpur villages have united under the banner of J&K Farmers Movement, Bharat Kissan Union J&K unit, RS Pura. Since March 1, 2023, every day, some of them gather beneath a flyover on the newly constructed ring road in Miran Sahib to stage a day-long sit-in and return to their homes in the evening.
Eight of them, who spoke to Kashmir Times stated that they would continue to agitate till their demands are met.
Raising anti-government slogans and demanding their land and rights back, the agitating farmers rent the air with slogans of “Modi Sarkar Murdabad”, “Kissano Ki Zameenien Wapis Karo”, “Article-370, A-35 Wapis Lao”, and “Kisan Ekta Zindabad’’. They have been staging the protest for the last over three weeks.
A protesting local farmer, Kishore, told the Kashmir Times that they have been holding the sit-in since March 1 but the government has “failed to respond to our demands or given us a hearing.”
“We are being forcibly evicted from the lands we have lived in and have been farming over for generations. The lands are being acquired by the government and further sold,” he alleged.
Encroachment claims and counter claims
In March 2023, the J&K government claimed that it has retrieved 15.83 lakhs kanals of “encroached land” from “influential individuals” after revocation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
However, the locals contest these claims. “We are the rightful owners of our lands,” they say.
According to them, on February 28, the Deputy Commissioner came to their farm lands along with a posse of policemen, who put up signboards on their fields which claimed their agricultural fields as government land. They were not served any prior notices and were forcibly evicted.
About 50-60 farmers and their families have been impacted by the move.
One of the protestors said, “I am a farmer’s son living in Ban Sultan and my four generations have tended this farmland, which was gifted to us by Maharaja Hari Singh. They’re wrongly claiming it as state-land.”
Tracing the history of the agricultural lands in the area, an elderly farmer sitting on dharna said, “Maharaja Hari Singh, during his reign, gave us this forest land, giving us rights to convert it into agriculture land and produce food in it. But now the government is calling it state-land.”
“How did it suddenly become state-land?” he questioned in anguish.
Farmers protesting after they were evicted from their agricultural lands by police in R S Pura, Jammu district, on Saturday, March 23, 2024. Photo/Aman ZutshiBackground of land-related laws
The history of these lands in questions goes back to the reign of Jammu and Kashmir’s monarch when idle land in villages was meant to be used for community needs like graveyards, religious areas, and bathrooms. Whatever was left over was given to farmers based on the land they were farming. This land, called Shamlaat, was given to farmers without them having to pay land revenue.
The process started in 1924. In 1926, Maharaja Hari Singh announced several benefits, including rights for landholders to use forest areas adjacent to the villages, extended rights for villagers to remove timber, and rights for village communities regarding land of deceased landholders. Most significantly, village communities without village commons were granted khalsa land up to a certain percentage of their holdings.
This reform, initiated by Maharaja Hari Singh, gave villagers these lands for agricultural practices and to ameliorate their lives.
After 1947, the introduction of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act saw the implementation of non-compensatory land reforms whereby individuals holding vast estates were divested of lands beyond 22.75 acres. This together with the Tenancy Act bestowed the ownership rights of lands to the tillers and tenants.
The Jammu and Kashmir Land Reforms Act 1976 further reduced the ceiling of land holding to 12.50 acres.
As for the lands that these agitating farmers of R.S.Pura are protesting over, on paper these continued to be projected as state land for another two decades but they were given the right to land use after paying a certain revenue to the government as per an official order in 1958. This is known as the LB6.
According to this order, all unauthorized occupations were recognized, and occupants were informed they must pay the government a share, while the land’s ownership would remain with the government. They were occupying these land parcels at the government’s discretion.
Later, in 1966, the government issued Order 432, granting ownership rights to occupants of all lands under LB6 across Jammu and Kashmir.
Roshni Act
Those who were unable to avail the scheme back then found another opportunity in the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act of 2001, popularly known as the Roshni Act. The Roshni Act was legislated in the J&K legislative assembly with the twin aim of providing ownership to landless people and filling the coffers of the state exchequer for generating funds for building hydroelectric projects.
The people in possession of state lands or those regularized under LB6 of 1958 were asked to get ownership rights after paying a fixed sum of money to the government. These aggrieved farmers availed of the scheme.
However, the law also enabled several influential people, including politicians and bureaucrats, to unscrupulously grab lands for free or at throw-away prices. The high court in its verdict in October 2020, took a serious note of the wrongdoings under the Roshni Act and held all Roshni allotments void ab initio, and declared the Roshni Act unconstitutional.
The blanket ban on the allotments made under Roshni Act acted as a severe blow to the poor landless beneficiaries of the scheme.
According to official figures, out of the total 348,200 kanals of land regularized under the Roshni Act, 340,100 kanals were transferred free of cost as agricultural land. Not all beneficiaries had political and official connections. According to data, the scheme had 30,000 beneficiaries who could get ownership of state land. Most of them were poor homeless and landless people.
These 50-60 odd families from R.S.Pura agitating today were among them. They said they paid the money that was duly fixed under the Roshni scheme for the regularization process. All the previous land-related laws, including Big Landed Estates Abolition, Tenancy Act and Land Reforms Act, that protected the rights of poor agrarian communities to use of land, were scrapped in 2020.
Demands of the impacted farmers
“We demand that our agriculture lands in Ban Sultan (Miran Sahib) and Mahanpur (Bishnah) be returned to us,” they now say.
An elderly woman farmer, participating in a sit-in to reclaim her seized land, told the Kashmir Times, “Our family has resided here for four generations. In 2015, a Patwari tampered with our land records, and in 2018, despite our inability to offer bribes, our land mutation during the land inspection (girdawari) wasn’t processed. We rely on our meager 4 kanals of land, supporting three families,” she maintained.
Recounting the sequence of events of February 28, she said, “Initially, the police issued threats, followed by calls from Miran Sahib and Nawanshahr DSP, asserting their inability to assist us. Subsequently, without our knowledge, the police forcefully installed signboards on 4 kanals of our land. While poor farmers have been evicted, those with bigger land holdings have been left untouched.”
She said that this was just the reverse of what this government has been promising. “They made big claim that they are taking back the land of big feudal lords but in reality, they are only after small landholders,” she added.
Despite enduring police harassment, we remain steadfast in our demand for justice, she said. Another farmer echoes her sentiments and averred that the government is using police to tyrannise them.
One protesting farmer said that signboards belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir police department have been forcibly planted on the agricultural land of peasants in these villages, instilling fear among the populace that their land is being appropriated by the police.
This action is highly condemnable, as it serves as a blatant intimidation tactic and coercive measures, he said.
The protesting villagers said that they have been told that the land would be used for development projects.
“If development projects are necessary, alternative vacant lands such as nurseries or factories should be utilized, sparing our agricultural plots. Prime Minister Modi must recognize the dire poverty in Jammu and refrain from further oppression. Regrettably, no official has acknowledged our plight,” they maintain.
Who will feed us?
Disappointed and agitated, one of the farmers reminded of prime minister Narendra Modi’s claims that 140 crore Indian are his family. “Where do we poor people fit in this family? Does his family only comprise of the super-rich persons being gifted contracts and airports.”
One of them said, “Our demand is clear: The farmers who have been dispossessed must be provided with land, employment opportunities for their children, and adequate compensation.”
He added, “Generations of our families have toiled on this land, investing our blood and sweat into its cultivation. Losing this land would be devastating, as it is our primary means of livelihood. We demand nothing less than full justice from both the local and national governments regarding this matter.”
For the distraught women farmers, the grim realities are staring them in the face. One of them said, “What will we eat if our lands are snatched from us? How will we produce food? Our children will die of hunger and we’re ready to commit suicide if our demands are not met.”
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