A high-level committee led by the Moradabad Divisional Commissioner has recommended that Pakistani refugees settled in Uttar Pradesh be granted ownership of the land in their possession, similar to the policy followed in Uttarakhand.
In this regard, the committee headed by Moradabad Divisional Commissioner Aunjaneya Kumar Singh has submitted its report to the government recently, sources here on Tuesday said. At present, about 20,000 refugee families are occupying 50,000 acres of land, but they have not got the entire ownership of the land till date.
In 1947, at the time of the Indo-Pak partition, refugees from Pakistan, both east and west Pakistan, were settled in Lakhimpur Kheri, Rampur, Bijnor and Pilibhit districts.
They were given land to earn a livelihood. Most of them were Hindus and Sikh refugees. However, all these families did not get transferable land rights. That is, the heirs of these families cannot take any loan from the bank on their land other than a crop loan. They do not even have the right to sell land.
There are 23 villages of refugees in Rampur while in Bijnor, refugees are settled in 18 separate villages. These refugees were settled in different villages or near the forests in Lakhimpur Kheri and Pilibhit too.
The report of the committee stated that some refugee families were granted land under the Government Grant Act, which has since expired. There will be a need to enact a separate law to give full ownership i.e. transferable landlord rights to these refugee families, so that the current rules can be relaxed in these cases.
In many districts of Uttarakhand, the work of giving ownership has been done by taking some percentage of land.
However, some refugee families are also settled on reserved category forest land, pastures and ponds. The report said that they will have to consider changing the law to give them land elsewhere or to give ownership rights on the same land.
The permission of the Supreme Court will also have to be obtained through the Central Government to give rights to forest land. According to highly placed sources of the government, a cabinet sub-committee can now be set up to consider the matter as the government has to take the final decision.