Appreciating the State government for taking steps to implement poll guarantees, the Committee for Land and Housing, a conglomerate of different organisations and individuals working for getting agricultural land for the landless and homes to homeless, has urged the former to extend the scope of guarantees by regularising bagair hukum land in favour of genuine cultivators.
Central committee member of the forum Kariyappa Gudimani, at a media conference in Ballari on Monday, said that regularising bagair hukum land will benefit around 30 lakh families who are cultivating government land for the last 30 years.
“Landless farmers have been cultivating government land for the last 30 years. This land is the only source of their income. They have been demanding that the government regularise cultivation and issue land titles to them. Successive governments have been making promises one after the other. But none has taken it seriously. The influential and powerful people and private companies have grabbed thousands of acres of valuable government land and they easily get titles also,” he said.
“However, the demand of poor landless farmers for regularisation of bagair hukum land that they have been cultivating for decades has remained unfulfilled. I urge the Siddaramaiah government to fulfill this long-pending demand,” he said.
He also warned that his forum will launch a State-wide agitation if the demand is ignored and teach a lesson to the Congress in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, just as it contributed to the humiliating defeat of the BJP in the recent Assembly elections in the State.
