The agitation committee for land rights, Bhoomi Mattu Vasati Hakku Vanchitara Horata Samit, staged a protest near the railway station in Belagavi on Monday.
Thousands of protesters who alighted from trains gathered at the railway grounds in the morning. They played drums, trumpets and other instruments. They shouted slogans for the unity of their association and sought ownership rights to land. Each poor family should get a house and a piece of land to till, they said.
They had planned to walk to the Suvarna Soudha, the venue of the winter session of the Legislature. However, the police did not allow them to hold a procession. A rally was held in the railway grounds and a delegation was taken to the Suvarna Soudha to meet officers in the Chief Minister’s office.
Their demands include clearing all applications before the land grants committees in the taluks and districts, regularising all Bagair Hukum lands, approving all land grants done before independence by kings, no forceful eviction of residents from houses and lands situated on public properties, and Akrama Sakrama settlements.
Sirimane Nagaraj, who led the delegation, said that the Chief Minister’s Principal Secretaries Atiq Ahmed and Tushar Girinath had sympathetically listened to them and promised to bring the demands to the notice of the Chief Minister. “They also told us that existing laws on non-eviction of residents, land grant committees, granting ownership in cultivated forest areas and others will be strictly implemented in favour of the poor,” Mr Nagaraj said.
Other leaders including S.R. Hiremath, K.S. Puttannayya, D.H. Pujar, K.T. Gangadhar, Siddhagouda Mudalagi, Swarna Bhat, and Noor Shridhar participated.