The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday adjourned a petition filed by the administration seeking a review of its decision to scrap the R...
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday adjourned a petition filed by the administration seeking a review of its decision to scrap the Roshni Act, evict encroachers on state-owned land and retrieve it within six months, reported PTI. The matter will be heard on December 16.
The petition, filed by Special Secretary in Revenue Department Nazir Ahmad Thakur on December 4, sought the modification of the nearly two-month-old judgment. Thakur pleaded that a large number of common people in the region, including landless cultivators and nomadic communities, would “suffer unintentionally” as they would be pushed to homelessness.
The plea implored the High Court to differentiate between the “common people” and “the wealthy land grabbers” of Jammu and Kashmir.
“The common people are unfortunately clubbed along with rich and wealthy land grabbers who have obtained a title over state land through the provision of now struck down Act,” it said. “There is a need to distinguish between these two classes of people; the fact of being either a landless cultivator or house-holder with at the most one dwelling house in personal use, would be the primary criteria for differentiating between two classes.”
Therefore, instead of scrapping the act completely, a mechanism should be formed that would allow landless labourers,...
