For more than a decade, the issue of granting status of the statehood activists to those who participated in the Uttarakhand statehood movement has not been settled yet in Uttarakhand.
The fact is that out of 915 applications received from citizens for seeking status of the statehood activists, 909 applications have been rejected by the district administration Pithoragarh on the pretext of not fulfilling the laid norms of the State Government.
According to the Pithoragarh district administration, the concerned officials could not consider these 909 applications as these applicants are not fulfilling all the norms that the State Government has set to grant status of the statehood activists to those who took part in the statehood movement for separate Uttarakhand state.
“A total 915 applications were received from the citizens in regard to grant the status of the statehood activists to them. Working on these applications, the revenue and the regular police had been verifying these applications for the past three months in the district. But we could not consider as many as 909 applications as the applicants were not fulfilling some norms set by the State Government for granting the status of statehood activists to the citizens who participated in Uttarakhand statehood movement”, said Naresh Durgapla, SDM, Pithoragarh.
However, C MS Bisht, District Magistrate, Pithoragarh has asked the SDM Durgapal to seek the advise of the State Government for granting status of the statehood activists to the rest of the six applicants whose cases have been cleared by the members of the committee set up under the chairmanship of the District Magistrate to deal with statehood activists’ issues. Meanwhile, 303 citizens have been identified as statehood activists in the Pithorgarh district so far.
Out of these 303 identified statehood activists, ‘certificate of statehood activist’ have been issued to 250 citizens across the district Durgapla further said. “But 192 applications received from Didihat region for seeking status of the statehood activists, could not be considered in the absence of police report, medical certificate, report from the local intelligence unit and other relevant documents”, added the concerned officials, district administration Pithoragarh.
At the same time the District Magistrate Pithoragarh has also asked the concerned officials to take up the matters of the granting statehood activists, after thorough investigation so that such matters could be considered in proper manner.