Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal will take up the issue of eviction of Sikh farmers in Kutch region with his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi.
Being one of the key guests in the inaugural function of ‘Vibrant Gujarat Global Agricultural Summit’, Badal will be visiting Gandhinagar on September 9 to participate in the summit. Sources in Punjab government have maintained that the Chief Minister will discuss the issue face-to-face with Modi when the two meet in the summit.
Though the Sikh farmers’ issue has been taken by Badal government earlier with Modi as well but Akali Dal has been left red-faced by the decision of Modi government to pursue the case in Supreme Court and lately appointing renowned lawyer Fali S Nariman to contest the state government’s case in the Supreme Court.
The farmers had also rejected legal help from Punjab government, and also the opposition Congress in the state. Several farmers from Punjab and Haryana, who had settled in Gujarat, are facing evacuation and feared that they would be displaced from the state following a 2010 order freezing land of farmers from outside the state.
Though the affected farmers got some relief from Gujarat High Court in 2012, Narendra Modi-led state government had moved the Supreme Court challenging the relief. The case is now scheduled to come up before the Apex Court on August 27. The Sikh farmers’ plight in Gujarat has become a political issue in Punjab, with both the ruling and opposition targeting each other and leaving no stone unturned to take credit for helping the farmers.
Going into background of the matter, Sikhs from Punjab and Haryana went to Gujarat in 1965-66 when the then Prime Minister lal Bahadur Shastri had given priority to farmers from Punjab to settle in the border areas for security purpose.
A delegation of Punjabi farmers based in Bhuj and Kutch had met Badal in September last seeking his intervention for resolving the issue of their legitimate ownership right over the agriculture land being ploughed by them over past 40 years.
Responding affirmatively, Badal shot off separate letters to Modi and the then BJP national president Nitin Gadkari on the very next day. The issue was once again brought in the public eye in July this year after Modi’s elevation as BJP election committee head, and a report by the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) indicting Modi government for “discriminating against” Sikh community in Kutch.