Mohali, February 1: The decision was taken in a meeting chaired by chief minister Amarinder Singh. Earlier, the PLPA notification was made for a total of 41,043 hectare land which is going to expire on February 3. Out of this, 418 hectare land was denotified during the previous SAD-BJP rule.
The main reason for the delay in extending the Act was that studies were being done by Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation and the Punjab remote sensing centre on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana high court to follow a proper procedure.
However, the Punjab BJP unit, in a press conference on Wednesday, opposed illegal forcing the PLPA on farmers in Kandi area of Mohali, allegedly in sheer disregard of the high court orders. Punjab BJP vice-president Harjit Singh Grewal and state party secretary Vineet Joshi said that the Punjab forest department in February 2003, without following proper legal process, locked 14 villages in Mohali under the PLPA and disallowed use of land for any purpose, including agriculture. The affected villagers had approached the high court, which in 2017 accepted their contentions.
The BJP leaders said that the high court had clearly stated that in February 2018, when the restrictions on the 14 villages – Siswan Choti, Badi Naggal, Majra, Pallanpur, Dhulwan, Majrian, Sanyuk, Tarapur, Mirzapur, Gaucher, Burwana, Nada and Pachchad – would lapse, the state government before issuing a fresh notification should first conduct a proper legal and scientific study to ascertain that soil erosion is taking place and the water table is falling.
Source Times Of India
