Roshni Act: SC asks HC to decide on review pleas
Central ministers of the BJP who have been accusing the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) leadership of being the main beneficiaries and having grabbed land to the tune of Rs 25,000 crore, have now fallen silent after observations by the courts.
The silence is also because of the fact that figures have shown that the majority of Jammu Hindus have been the beneficiaries under the Roshni scheme, while the BJP’S youth wing and other such elements have been calling Muslims in Jammu as the “land jihadis under the Roshni scheme”.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court, while listening to petitions challenging the J&K High Court order on the Roshni Act, has asked the High Court to take a decision on the review petitions on 21 December 2020 as the case is listed on that date, because the apex court said that the same matter cannot be listened in both the courts simultaneously.
The figures released by the J&K administration about the beneficiaries under this Roshni Act have also forced the BJP leadership to maintain silence and ask the administration to file a review petition. The figures show that the majority of the beneficiaries under this Act are the Hindus of Jammu and not the Muslims of either Kashmir or Jammu.
The figures available say that, under the scheme, the transfer of ownership rights was approved for 33,345.35 kanals in the Kashmir region as against 3,14,810.18 kanals in the Jammu region.
It is in place to mention that on 9 October 2020, the J&K High Court struck down the Roshni Act and declared all land transfers under the law null and void. The BJP called the judgment a surgical strike against “land jihad”.
Now, after the figures are out and the beneficiaries are seen to be mostly Jammu Hindus, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took to twitter and took a jibe at the BJP leadership. Omar in his tweet said, “If the timing of this ‘naming and shaming’ was suspect, the list itself was selective, the main beneficiaries are not Muslims, but Jammu Hindus, who are furious about losing their property rights; the ‘land jihad’ narrative appears to be unravelling.”
The J&K administration has also filed a review petition in J&K High Court, asking the court to give them time and also to distinguish between the land grabbers and the common people who have been benefited by this Roshni Act.
In the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also mentioned about the review petition aad said that even the government is of the view that many common people have been benefited by this Act, and they should not be bracketed with the land grabbers.
The Supreme Court while listening to the arguments said that the J&K High Court should take a final call on the review petition of the government and listened to the arguments of the lawyers who have challenged the decision of the J&K High Court, calling it illegal. Recently, when the J&K High Court nullified the Roshni Act, it said that it is a scam and asked the CBI to probe it. It also directed the J&K administration to upload the names of all the beneficiaries under this Act and evict them from this land within a month.
Soon after the decision of J&K High Court, every leader of BJP, including Union ministers and Central leaders from BJP, accused the PAGD leadership of being involved in this “land scam” and called them as a gang of land grabbers.
Recently, even the High Court, while taking up the review petition of the J&K administration, expressed its displeasure over the selective names being uploaded on government websites and said that it was not the purpose of the court to name and shame some persons.
PAGD president Dr Farooq Abdullah recently said that all the allegations against him for land grabbing were baseless and said that BJP was peddling lies in Jammu and Kashmir to win the DDC elections.
He was reacting to the statements of two BJP leaders Shahnawaz Hussain and junior finance minister Anurag Thakur who claimed that Farooq Abdullah, along with other leaders of his party, were involved in this fraud. Another BJP minister Smriti Irani in Jammu said that these leaders had grabbed the land worth Rs 25,000 crore for themselves.