Bulldozer raj: Now in Jammu and Kashmir

The Union Territory’s demolition drive has struck fear in the hearts of the poor.

An automobile showroom being demolished during an anti-encroachment drive in Jammu. | Photo Credit: Shanky Rathore/ANI

From Uttar Pradesh and other north Indian States, the bulldozer has now reached Jammu and Kashmir. As the administration under Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha continues its anti-encroachment drive to retrieve state land for development purposes, both justice and compassion seem to be in short supply. With no clarity on the list of encroachers, no regard for procedures, signs of an alleged anti-Muslim bias, and, in some instances, the demolition of structures despite the owners displaying valid documents, the bulldozer  has created an atmosphere of anger and panic in the Valley.

What is adding fuel to the fire is the circulation of random lists of so-called encroachers on social media, particularly WhatsApp, which some people are taking seriously in the absence of a proper official mechanism to intimate the public about who the encroachers are and giving them a chance to present arguments. In fact, some of these lists claimed that Omar Abdullah’s house on Gupkar Road in Srinagar, the J&K National Conference office, the Governor’s House, and the UN office in Srinagar, among other prominent venues, have been constructed on encroached land.

Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, questioned the administration’s lack of transparency and sought to know the basis on which bulldozers were being sent to people’s houses and shops without prior notice. Abdullah said, “The administration has told the court that these lists are fake, so we want to know the basis on which the bulldozers are being fanned out across J&K to terrorise people.” Abdullah voiced the people’s frustrations over a sweeping exercise that was happening without accountability. “I have been getting several phone calls that the properties of people who claim to have legitimate documents were demolished without notice being given,” he said. The law prescribes that the administration give notice, seek a response within a timeframe, and take action only after the notice period lapses without a reply.

An anti-Muslim bias

There also appears to be an underlying anti-Muslim bias in the selection of buildings and structures for demolition. Several political leaders cited specific cases where properties belonging to BJP leaders were given preferential treatment despite allegations of encroachment. N.C. spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar on February 12 shared a screen grab on Twitter that illustrated the discrimination. With the caption “Two sides of the same coin”, Dar posted two photographs—one showed a BJP leader’s shopping complex on state land in Anantnag that was sealed and the other showed a common man’s shopping complex on state land in Jammu that was razed.

The Internet and social media are full of emotional videos about poor people who went from earning livelihoods at small kiosks or farming on patches of State land to suddenly losing everything. The targeting of the poor is taking place despite the administration’s repeated assurances that disadvantaged sections would not be affected.

Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party activists protest in Srinagar against the anti-encroachment drive happening across the Union Territory. | Photo Credit: PTI

Ramesh Kumar, Divisional Commissioner of Jammu, on February 13 reiterated that no landless or poor people would be displaced during the ongoing drive. It was on January 9 that the J&K administration issued a circular directing all deputy commissioners of the Union Territory to ensure that “all encroachments on state land” were removed “to the extent of 100% by January 31, 2023”. The circular essentially meant that people living in shanties on common land meant for grazing (“Kacharai”) or using such lands for cultivation, as well as the beneficiaries of the now repealed Roshni Act would be seen as intruders.

An overwhelming scale

The Supreme Court on January 20 refused to stay the circular but orally asked the administration not to demolish homes built on Roshni land. Clearly, the administration is not heeding the verbal order. The scale of the ongoing demolition drive is overwhelming. The government claims that 20,46,436 kanals (2,55,804.47 acres) of land are under illegal occupation in J&K. At least 3.48 lakh kanals (43,499.99 acres) of the “encroached land” were regularised under the Roshni scheme. The Jammu and Kashmir State Land (Vesting Ownership to the Occupants) Act, popularly known as the Roshni Act (ratified in 2001), provided a mechanism to grant ownership rights to occupants of State land after they paid a fee decided by the government. The funds raised under the Act were supposed to finance power projects in Jammu and Kashmir.

In December 2018, however, the then J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik repealed the Roshni Act, arguing that the law had “not served” its purpose. The J&K High Court agreed with that decision in October 2020, noting that it was “completely unconstitutional, contrary to law and unsustainable”. Just before demolitions were to be initiated, however, the government urged the court to modify its order to make the evictions applicable only to rich and influential land grabbers. In the absence of a clear guideline from the court to distinguish between rich and poor land grabbers, confusion persists.

As the bulldozers wreak havoc, the J&K political leadership is unanimous in its condemnation. Omar Abdullah said that bulldozers should be the last resort. Mehbooba Mufti described the current situation in Kashmir under Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha as “worse than Afghanistan”. Mufti, a former J&K chief minister, who heads the People’s Democratic Party, also protested the bulldozing at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar with placards that said “Kashmir ki pukar hai, yahan goondon ki sarkar hai”. She was briefly detained by the Delhi Police along with her party colleagues and workers. Sajad Lone of the People’s Conference said that he suspected “[causing] humiliation” was the government’s main objective. Democratic Azad Party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, another ex-J&K chief minister, met Home Minister Amit Shah to seek assurances that small landholders would be immune from the eviction drive.

There have also been some instances of political targeting, such as the one involving Nedou’s Hotel in Srinagar’s M.A. Road locality. Amid much hoopla, the State’s bulldozers landed in front of the hotel, whose owners are closely linked to the Abdullah family. Word spread that the owners had occupied about 40 kanals (5 acres) of State land, even though the owners showed lease documents to TV crews and argued that the lease was valid for another 70 years.

Muzaffar Shah, leader of the J&K Awami National Conference and a relative of the Nedous, said they were shocked by the administration’s brazenness. “They entered the premises without serving prior notice, with a bulldozer, with media persons, and the entire police paraphernalia,” Shah told Frontline on the phone from Srinagar. “Where is our right to self-defence? The property holder is showing a valid lease document. Yet, the police claim they were here to recover 40 kanals (5 acres) of land. Where exactly have we encroached 40 kanals of land? This is absurd.”

The Nedou family

Nedou’s has a riveting history. Michael Adam Nedou, who hailed from Ragusa, a Croatian walled city on the Adriatic Sea, was captivated by Kashmir’s natural surroundings while travelling from Murree (now in Pakistan) to Gulmarg in 1880. The Croatian businessman ended up building two hotels in Kashmir, one in Gulmarg and the other in Srinagar. Later, his son Michael Henry Nedou fell in love with Mir Jan, a local Kashmiri girl. Michael embraced Islam to marry Mir and took on a new name, Sheikh Ahmed Hussain. The pair had a daughter, Akbar Jehan, who later married Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Their son is the prominent J&K politician Farooq Abdullah.

The Nedou family pointed out the irony in the government’s claims about boosting development while targeting a hotel that taps the erstwhile State’s tourism potential and brings jobs to the locals. Muzaffar Shah said the government’s anti-encroachment drive was in many ways an attempt to undo Sheikh Abdullah’s revolutionary land redistribution initiative.

The demolished outer wall of the Srinagar residence of Advocate Shabnam Gani Lone, sister of Sajad Lone, Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference's Chairman, during the anti-encroachment drive in the Union Territory. | Photo Credit: Mohammad Amin War/ANI

CPI(M) leader and four-time Kulgam MLA M.Y. Tarigami agreed. In an interaction with Frontline, he said that back in the 1950s, when the Praja Parishad party stormed into J&K with the slogan, “Ek vidhan, ek nishan, ek pradhan”, its singular agenda was to scuttle the ongoing land reforms. “Whereas in the rest of India, the right to property came in the way of introducing revolutionary land reforms, this was enabled by Article 370 in J&K, which gave us a different yardstick,” Tarigami said. “The Praja Parishad could not succeed in its design of safeguarding feudalism then, but it seems that by undoing all the land laws that J&K has, its design may be at work now.”

Ending abject poverty

The historic Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, 1950, ended landlordism in J&K by placing a 22.5-acre maximum ceiling for landholding, with the surplus land transferred to the tiller without compensation to the original owner. This effectively ended abject poverty in Kashmir. Muzaffar Shah said that removing the hapless poor from their shanties was a stark contrast to Sheikh Abdullah’s programme of empowering the poor. Though the government has maintained that the retrieved land would be used for the public good, the sweeping changes in land laws enabled after August 5, 2019, (when J&K’s special status was revoked) has left people apprehensive about the future.

The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Adaption of Central Laws) Third Order and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Adaption of State Laws) Fifth Order, 2020, repealed 12 Acts and amended 14 laws related to land on October 26, 2020. The changes allow non-residents to purchase and own immovable property in J&K and transfer agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The Reorganisation Act did away with the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, the J&K Tenancy Act, (1980), and the Jammu and Kashmir Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1956, which regulated the rights of common land such as roads, streets, lanes, water channels, or other sources of water supply to villagers. Tarigami challenged this decision in the Supreme Court on December 1, 2020.

A deep-rooted fear

The fear of the bulldozer and speculation over its underlying agenda is so deep-rooted that civil society groups and unions that had been lying low since August 2019 have begun to assemble and register protests. The J&K Kisan Tehreek last week took out a significant procession at Press Colony, Srinagar, with protesters chanting: “Zameen hamari, hukum tumhari, nahi chalega”. The Kisan Tehreek did another round of protests in Kathua, reminding people of the historic land reforms that Kashmir’s then leadership had pioneered.

The Centre has now moved to halt the anti-encroachment drive, according to a February 15 report in The Hindu. The reprieve has come at a time when, as per an ANI report, about 23,000 hectares of land have been retrieved in Jammu division alone. Yet, in the absence of transparent government data, it is difficult to assess the magnitude of the drive in Kashmir and those left destitute as a result of it. Amnesty International is among the human rights watchdogs that has issued statements about the bulldozing of people’s homes despite many residents providing proof of ownership. The rights body also wrote to the UK construction company JCB, telling them they should be horrified that their bulldozers were being used for such demolitions.

The Crux

• As the Jammu and Kashmir administration under Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha continues its anti-encroachment drive to retrieve state land for development purposes, both justice and compassion seem to be in short supply.
• What is adding fuel to the fire is the circulation of random lists of so-called encroachers on social media.
• There also appears to be an underlying anti-Muslim bias in the selection of buildings and structures for demolition. 
• The Supreme Court on January 20 orally asked the administration not to destroy homes built on Roshni land but the verbal order is not being heeded.
• As the bulldozers wreak havoc, the J&K political leadership is unanimous in its condemnation.
• There have also been some instances of political targeting, such as the one involving Nedou’s Hotel in Srinagar’s M.A. Road locality.
• The fear of the bulldozer and speculation over its underlying agenda is so deep-rooted that civil society groups and unions that had been lying low since August 2019 have begun to assemble and register protests.