A meeting of legislators of districts, in which dwellers of forest land are being evicted by the forest department, has been convened in Bangalore on June 10 to discuss the issue threadbare.
The meeting will be attended by ministers concerned and senior officials of forests and revenue departments.
The issue of eviction of dwellers of forest land in the state triggered a heated debate in the Assembly on Wednesday with both the ruling and opposition members trading charges against each other.
BJP’s Govind B Karjol staged a dharna demanding a statement from forest minister B Ramanath Rai that families would not be evicted till the government finds out a solution.
Bowing to pressures from members, speaker Kagodu Thimmappa announced that a meeting would be held on June 10 to find out a solution to this decades old problem.
Initiating the debate, Karjol brought the eviction of hundreds of people belonging to lambani, scheduled castes/tribes in ten villages of Bagalkot district who have been living on the forest land since 1938 to the notice of the House. The forest department is removing the sheds/houses of those poor people to reclaim its land. The government should direct the forest department not to evict those poor families till alternative arrangements were made, he demanded.
The forest minister replied that the government would try to help those people within the ambit of law. However, he was unclear on issuing orders to this department staff against eviction of people.
Unsatisfied with Rai’s reply, Karjol rushed to the well of the House and staged a dharna alone. The speaker asked Karjol to tell those aggrieved families to submit applications seeking allotment of land on which they have constructed their dwellings. Following directions from the speaker, Rai promised that those families would not be evicted till further orders.
C T Ravi of BJP raised a similar issue of eviction notices given to a few farmers who are cultivating forest land for many years in Chikmagalur district. He wanted a similar assurance from the minister as the eviction would start from Thursday.
KJP’s B S Yeddyurappa said that forest department has dug trenches in 25-30 bagair hukum land cases in Shimoga district and preventing farmers from tilling land. He wanted the minister to convene a meeting of all legislators to sort out the issue and till then eviction orders should be kept in abeyance. At this juncture, K Shivamurthy of Congress held the previous BJP Government for creating a mess and said now they have woken up. No effort was made to protect the interest of those people.
This sparked off a heated debate among the ruling and opposition members. Nothing was audible in the melee. The Speaker’s appeal to all the members to keep calm did not yield results. Finally, the Speaker strictly warned Shivamurthy that he would be sent out of the House if he failed to assume his seat.
Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra and other senior ministers went to Shivamurthy and asked calm down.