Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 29: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti today accused Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of betraying the poor by opposing the land rights bill brought by her party MLA Waheed Para in the Legislative Assembly.
Speaking to reporters here today the PDP Chief said that the bill was to ensure shelter for poor families who built houses on grazing land decades ago and was not about legalising recent encroachments. “Omar has not betrayed the PDP, but the poor people. He wants to snatch shelter from the poor. This was not a bill about land ownership-it was a bill to ensure shelter for poor families,” she said.
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Mufti said that both BJP and NC opposed the bill with former calling it “land Jehad” and latter “land grabbing”.
“If someone has been living on state land, on a small piece of land, for the past 20 years and has built a house there, we would be referring to such cases. We were not talking about the present times. But the BJP called it land jihad and Omar called it land grabbing,” she added.
The PDP chief accused the Chief Minister of taking away the roof from people’s heads.
“By rejecting this bill, Omar is trying to take away the roof from over people’s heads. It won’t affect us-we tried to do our part. We had only three votes, and we said: take these votes, but save the shelter of poor people. They didn’t want to do it, so what can we say?” she added.
Mufti said that the bill could have been passed without statehood. “Daily wagers are poor people; they are the ones running major departments. They sought votes in their name, promising to protect their land. Omar says he doesn’t have statehood-but even without it, he could have passed the land bill. To address people’s insecurity, he had that opportunity. But he chose not to,” she said.
“We wanted to save the roofs over the heads of poor people who have faced bulldozers since 2019. By rejecting that (bill), Omar has rejected our attempts to save those people,” she said.
The Legislative Assembly on Tuesday rejected Para’s bill on recognising proprietary rights for houses illegally built on Government and community lands, with CM saying its passage would “open floodgates for land grab”.
Referring to the PDP’s support to the ruling NC in the recent Rajya Sabha elections, the former Chief Minister said her party voted for the NC in exchange of support for the bill.
On the issue of regularisation of daily wagers, Mufti said her party had also brought a bill in this regard.
“We had also brought a bill on daily wagers. These are very poor people, the poorest section of society but they run the PHE, Irrigation, Power development, Health and Education departments. They have been working for the last 20-25 years. The government had sought votes to regularise the daily wagers and to safeguard the land in J&K,” she added.
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