Congress National Spokesperson and Shri Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tewari today announced that if need be he will fight the cases of all those people, whose land was being forcibly taken away by the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab, right up to the Supreme Court of India.
Interacting with residents of several villages falling in the Kharar assembly segment near here today, Tewari criticized the AAP government in Punjab for indiscriminately trying to dispossess poor people of their small landholdings in the name of clearing the “encroachments” even when they had genuine ownership claims over that land.
The INC National Spokesperson said, nobody had any problem with the government taking back the genuine Panchayat land from those who had actually encroached upon it. “But we will not let this government dispossess those who have recorded, legal and lawful ownership rights over the land they are in possession for several decades”, he asserted.
The Congress MP disclosed that he had learnt that the government had started the process of fiddling with the revenue records also. He alleged that the names of genuine owners, who owned the land for as many as 70 years were being removed from the revenue records in order to prove that they had illegally occupied it.
Tewari, who is also a senior Supreme Court lawyer, warned the officials against blindly following the illegal and unlawful diktats of the government lest the long arm of law eventually caught up with them. “Nobody is coming to save or defend you in the court of law if you commit anything wrong”, he cautioned the officials, after being told that revenue records were being altered and tampered with, at the behest of the AAP government.
Tewari disclosed that he was told, some overenthusiastic and overexcited officials in mad race of being seen as more loyal than the king, had even misguided the government by violating the orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The same people who are now gloating about reclaiming the “occupied land” may well have to face the contempt of court also, he warned.