ROHRU, July 17 – After left-aligned outfits like the Himachal Seb Utpadak Sangh and the Himachal Kisan Sabha raised their voices, now the rightwing Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) has entered the fray, throwing its weight behind the small and marginal farmers being evicted from forest land.
A delegation of BKS leaders submitted a memorandum to the Governor of Himachal Pradesh through the SDM Rohru, demanding immediate intervention to stop the eviction drive.
The BKS urged the state to frame a concrete policy to regularise old encroachments made by small farmers and protect homes built decades ago, some as far back as the 1970s.
“People had no idea that this was forest land. These are not big land grabbers—we are talking about poor farmers who encroached marginal patches around their ancestral fields just to build a roof over their heads,” a BKS leader told the media at Rohru.
BKS leaders cited past efforts by the organisation to push for regularisation. “We had even supported a memorandum to the Centre during the tenure of CM Virbhadra Singh in 2015.
Even then, apple orchards were axed in the name of court orders. In 2017, Hon’ble Justice Trilok Chauhan had proposed a policy to resolve these issues. But successive governments dragged their feet,” a senior BKS member said.
The BKS questioned the state’s inconsistent stand on regularisation since the early 2000s and slammed the eviction of orchardists in the name of court orders. “You’re talking of protecting forests, but where’s the plan to accommodate the growing rural population?” the leader asked.
With the right and left farmer unions now speaking the same language, the pressure is mounting on the Sukhvinder Sukhu government to rethink its eviction strategy and come up with a clear and humane policy to deal with what’s now emerging as a state-wide flashpoint.
