Garhwal Post Bureau
Dehradun, 2 Feb: There is fear of displacement among residents of Rishikesh Bapu Gram and 12 Municipal Corporation wards following a Supreme Court order. BJP leader Ravindra Jugran met Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and demanded issue be resolved in order to provide relief to the affected public. In this regard, he also submitted a two-page memorandum to the Chief Minister.
The Chief Minister assured Jugran that the matter would be examined seriously and all possible efforts would be made to provide relief to the affected public.
Ravindra Jugran informed the Chief Minister that approximately 12 wards of the Municipal Corporation, including Bapu Gram, are affected, comprising nearly 25,000 families and around one lakh residents. He stated that people of the fourth generation have been residing in the affected areas since around 1950, i.e., for nearly 75 years.
He further said that the responsibility of providing basic civic amenities to the residents of the affected areas has been undertaken by the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand over the decades. Since 2010, official proceedings have been underway to declare the affected area as a revenue village.
Jugran suggested that the State Government should take the Supreme Court into confidence and pave the way for declaring the forest land as de-notified through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, so that the area may be converted into a revenue village.
He emphasised that it is essential to place before the Supreme Court the truth, facts, ground realities and actual situation, as the land is categorised as forest land only in government records, whereas in reality, for decades, the area has been a densely populated settlement with permanent residential houses.
