Mayank Aggarwal / DNASunday, June 13, 2010 0:49 IST
Jharkhand: There was a time when Rafique Ansari’s family owned 20 acres of land in Shyampur village. It was then one of the more well-heeled zamindaris in Jamatra district in today’s Jharkhand.
Fifty five years ago, when Ansari was a year old, the acres were swallowed in one go. The first prestigious multipurpose river valley project of the Nehruvian era had come to their village with the promise of changing the landscape and the vilaggers’ lives. All the Damodar Valley Corp (DVC) asked for in return was the land.
The Ansari family gave up its land and were promised jobs or money as compensation. Today, more than five decades later, the family has slid well below the poverty line. Rafique — who is now physically challenged — tills land owned by others and his son sells vegetables to sustain the family. He alleges that he is being made to suffer because he refused to cough up a bribe demanded by a DVC official.
“Various authorities directed the DVC to give us a job but nothing helped. In 1992, the SC asked the DVC to provide jobs to the oustees but over the last 18 years nothing has moved.”
Driven to desperation, the farmer used the Right to Information (RTI) to ferret out documents regarding steps taken by DVC for the rehabilitation of oustees. But his efforts failed and Ansari finally approached the Central Information Commission.
The CIC’s conclusions were hard hitting. In his order, Information Commissioner MM Ansari pointed out that the DVC did not act as per the provisions of the RTI Act. The CIC also issued show-cause notices to two DVC officials on why should not be penalised Rs25,000 each for denying Ansari the information he sought under the RTI act. “By present reckoning, it is unthinkable that an owner and farmer of over 20 acres would be categorised under BPL. Is it not the respondent (DVC), as an instrument of the state, responsible for throwing the appellant into the quagmire of poverty? The appellant’s case is an example of a deliberate public misdeed,” Ansari said.
Moved by his plight, the CIC has directed the DVC chairman to undertake a comprehensive assessment of all rehabilitation cases arising from the “acquisition of lands of the families whose sole source of the earning was the lands, which are in its possession now.” It also asked DVC to submit a report in this regard within one month.
Ansari, who now lives in Pakdih village in the same district, has faced a series of setbacks over the last many decades. His son could not complete schooling for lack of funds. Then in 1978, a DVC panel drew up a list of 724 oustees who were to be given relief. “Those listed before and after me got relief, but I didn’t,” he said.
With the CIC batting on his behalf the farmer has good reasons to hope for better days ahead. But after years of suffering bureaucratic indifference, Ansari finds it hard to be optimistic. “Both my father and grandfather died pursuing this fight, I will continue to fight on till the day I die,” he said.
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