43 yrs on, U’khand farmer wins back land

NEW DELHI/DEHRADUN : It took 43 years for Lokmani Sharma to get back his agricultural land wrongly notified as forest land by the state government. A long battle in courts and being arrested for encroaching government land was part of that battle.

His fight ended this month when an environment ministry committee vested the land back to him. Sharma, now 58, says he has spent his life’s earning in fighting the case in courts — from local to the Supreme Court — despite having land records showing that 2.27 hectares of agriculture land was leased to his father by a former zamindar Udham Singh Nagar, about 200 kms east of Dehradun, more than half a century ago.

In revenue records, the land was in Sharma’s name as Bhumidar (one who has land possession) with transferable rights.

The state forest department, however, took to the colonial Indian Forest Act of 1927 to notify his agriculture land in 1974 as forest saying there were “full-grown” trees on the land, which Sharma claimed was plantation done by him.

The forest department was not willing to listen to him and declared his land as forest turning him into an encroacher on his own land. He was arrested in 1988.

Sharma challenged the notification in local court which upheld his claim but the forest department appealed at every level till the Supreme Court rejected its plea.

The apparent reason for government dragging the case was that admitting its mistake would have meant holding its own personnel guilty of wrong-doing.