Punjab Government on Wednesday asked its Advocate-General Ashok Aggarwal to provide possible legal support to the Sikh farmers of the Kutch area in Gujarat facing eviction.
Already, Punjab AG Aggarwal has left for New Delhi to meet the Sikh farmers who are residing at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib in the National Capital. Punjabi farmers settled in Gujarat, in their statement before the Supreme Court in the ongoing case, have accused Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of “terrorizing, browbeating, intimidating and victimizing the minorities in Gujarat”.
They have also claimed that the prevailing law only prohibits non-agriculturists from buying land in Gujarat, and not the non-Gujaratis citing the Agricultural land (Vidharba Region and Kutch Area) Act, 1958.The farmers have sought dismissal of the appeal with costs, maintaining that “gross injustice has been done” to them as they are prima facie not hit by section 89 of the Act, which specifically barred only non agriculturists from buying land in Gujarat.
“Section 89 of the Act has only barred non agriculturists from buying land….The precondition for buying land is that the person has to be an agriculturist. If the intention of the legislature was that agriculturists from other states cannot buy land in Gujarat, this should have specifically been a part of the Act,” read the statement. Already, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had issued directions to the Union law Minister to extend legal aid to the farmers, and assured that the farmers’ case would be contested by best lawyers in the Supreme Court.The case is scheduled to come up before the Apex Court on August 27.
On the other hand, Punjab Government has also assured its commitments to safeguard the interests of Punjabi farmers in Gujarat by waging political and legal battle from the forefront. 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 the Gujarat High Court in 2012, Narendra Modi-led State Government had moved the Supreme Court challenging the relief. The Sikh farmers’ plight in Gujarat has become a political issue in Punjab.