‘Criminals in garb of monks occupying temples’
State government has expressed its helplessness in getting the illegal occupants of temples evicted.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Trivendra Singh Rawat who was sworn in as Uttarakhand’s new Chief Minister on Saturday is said to have an “honest image of a hard working man”. Even though popular in the state, Rawat’s “national recognition” is not widespread and party workers identify him as a person who keeps a low profile, though he has played a key role in organisational work. Rawat was with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1983 to 2002 and held the post of the BJP organising secretary in Uttarakhand. In 2002, Rawat won the Doiwala Assembly seat and was elected to the Assembly thrice.
A close aide of Rawat, requesting anonymity, said, “Doiwala was a place where the BJP had no outreach and yet we managed to win it under his leadership.”
Rawat has also served as the state agricultural minister between 2007 and 2012. A party worker said: “Uttarakhand won the Rashtriya Krishi Karman Award when he was the agricultural minister. He had initiated the ‘Swachhik Chakbandi Yojana’ to help the farming community organise their agricultural land in the hills and resolve disputes because of which a lot of farmers had started to feel discouraged to continue farming. He is somebody who is connected to the people at the grassroots level.”
Going forward, the Rawat government’s focus will be on generating employment opportunities to stop migration of youth in the state, to focus on improving tourism and boost the cottage industries, along with promoting ayurvedic, aromatic and organic initiatives in Uttarakhand.
Rawat, who was unanimously chosen as the Chief Minister, is known to have led the BJP to victory in the Jharkhand Assembly elections in 2014. Rawat is the third term MLA from the Doiwala seat in Pauri Garhwal district and is known for his loyalty to the party.
According to the affidavit filed by him, Rawat has assets worth over Rs 1 crore. The new Uttarakhand Chief Minister has no criminal cases against him and holds a postgraduate degree in History. He has also studied journalism from the Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University.
After being announced Chief Minister, Rawat said that his main aim would be to “provide people of the state with a corruption-free government and bring about a major change in the lives of the poorest of the poor which is also Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s top priority.” Opposition came down heavily on Navjot Singh Sidhu, newly inducted as the Minister for Tourism and Cultural Affairs in the Punjab government, for deciding to continue being a part of the popular comedy show on TV, The Kapil Sharma Show.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Subhash Sharma, BJP state secretary for Punjab, said: “He should understand the sanctity of the ministerial post. The people of Punjab would not respect him as a Minister if he continues going to a comedy show and keeps laughing there. Also, being a part of the state government, it is unfair to accept money through any other means as this could lead to a conflict of interest.”
The AAP also slammed Sidhu for not taking the people of Punjab “seriously”.
Speaking to this newspaper, Bhagwant Mann, senior leader and AAP Member of Parliament from Punjab said that even he was a comedian, but he left his full-time job to serve the people of Punjab.
“Even I had quit my full-time job of being a comedian despite the fact that it was giving me a lot of money. If he (Sidhu) wants to make money he should not have joined politics,” Mann said.
“Politics is a serious business; Sidhu would be making fun of the people who had voted for him by participating in the comedy show. He has become a minister now and the people want that they should get a minister who would think and work for them. But Sidhu seems to like his laughter show more than the people of Punjab and his ministry,” Mann added
However, Sidhu had said that he would work for the show during the night in Mumbai and return to his Ministry in Punjab in the morning, “even before any one wakes up”.
In a major goof up, the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government has “mixed up” Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) data of at least 2,500 panchayats of the state, delaying the implementation of Prime Minister Awas Yojana and other welfare schemes for the poor. There are 8,463 panchayats in Bihar.
Interestingly, Nitish Kumar along with another JDU leader Sharad Yadav and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and Congress, had made a hue and cry in 2015 over the alleged “withholding” of the caste-based Census data by the NDA government at the Centre. Leaders like M. Karunanidhi and A. Ramadoss too demanded the release of caste-based Census data. The caste data has still not been released as the Centre is yet to compile the data from the states. The admission was made in the Assembly by state rural development minister Shrawan Kumar this week, while giving the government’s reply to the House debate on budgetary demand for his department for 201718. The SECC and BPL (Below Poverty Line) list preparation work was conducted in Bihar in 2011, for which the rural Criminals and anti-social elements in the garb of mahants and saints have grabbed precious temple lands all over Bihar and repeated attempts by the government to remove them have failed, according to Bihar land reforms and revenue minister Madan Mohan Jha.
This was stated by Jha last week while replying to a question raised by former BJP state president, Mangal Pandey in the Bihar Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council).
Highlighting the helplessness of the state government in getting the illegal occupants of temples evicted, Jha stated that the state government had sent letters to the district magistrates, sub-divisional magistrates and circle officers to remove unauthorised occupants from the temple land, but the officials have failed in doing so.
According to Patna based officials, many “mahants” and self declared saints, backed by local criminals, were into the business of land grabbing in the state, including in the state’s capital Patna.
In many cases, these land grabbers use the modus operandi of building a temple on the encroached land and installing a “pujari” so that it becomes difficult for the real owner of the land to evict them since a fully functional temple is in place on the encroached land.
As per the data shared by the state government, the Bihar State Religious Trust board has identified existence of 8,722 temples in the state, out of which only 3,389 have been registered with the trust, while the rest 5,333 are unregistered. As per the officials, the lands in these temples are registered in the names of different Hindu deities as per the donation made by philanthropists.
The officials said that in many cases the members of the temple trusts themselves connive with the land grabbers and do not make any complaints to the board. “It has become a business. Encroaching land and building a temple on it and installing a priest. In many cases ancient temples too have been occupied by land grabbers and they are now multi-millionaire because of the value of the land on which the temple is built,” an official who is familiar with the matter said.
According to him, there were more that 8,000 temples in the state. “The figure for Patna (temples in Patna) will be more than 30004000, so you can imagine that how many temples are in Bihar,” the official said.
In most cases, as the land on which the temples are built are not recognised as public property, government officials face legal problems in getting them freed under the Public Premises Eviction Act, 1971.
In many cases, the members of the temple trusts themselves connive with the land grabbers.