Spectre of losing homes keeps Kydganj up at night

Allahabad: Fifth graders Ananya and cousin Ananyata should be studying for their class test, but the 10-year-olds have been spending their days between sobs and sniffles because they have heard that their homes would be razed to the ground in another week or so.
The little girls and their parents are not alone in this predicament. As many as 114 other families in Kydganj were served notices by the North Eastern Railway (NER) on July 8, asking them to vacate by July 20 the premises they have occupied for decades.
Railway officials said they were acting on a more than two-year-old Allahabad High Court order over land ownership. “We won the case in November 2016. Hence, notices have been served to reclaim railway land,” said chief public relations officer, NER, Pankaj Kumar Singh.
Around 500 residents, including children, met the district magistrate on Thursday and sought his intervention in the matter. “The DM has assured us that he would hold a meeting with all within a couple of days,” said Ganesh Keserwani, a former corporator.
Chief PRO Singh said senior officials of Varanasi divison would meet representatives of the area and Allahabad DM. “Let’s see what comes of the meeting. But, one thing is for sure that this is railway land and we have to evict them,” he added.
Residents contested the claim. “Our fathers and grandfathers built these houses 60-80 years ago. There was never any dispute over land barring one in 1976, when residents fought with the state government under the Public Premises Act and won the case. If the state government had then claimed to own the land, how can it be railway property in the first place?” asked Anil Kumar Srivastava. “Also, if the NER won the case in 2016, what was it doing for three years.”
Priti, another resident, said it all seemed like a bad joke. “On July 4, some people came, took measurements, noted down names and four days later, sent notices. They are playing with our lives,” said the would-be mother.
Back in 1972, Vijay Laxmi had toiled hard like a labourer to build a house for her family. At 81 today, she is unable to digest the news that her blood and sweat would become rubble in a few days’ time. “Mother has stopped eating for three days now,” said Anjani.
“In 1972, the then PWI (permanent way inspector) of NER had come to oversee drain construction work and said it would mark the boundary between railway land and our colony. And now they say the whole land belongs to them!” said 83-year-old TN Srivastava who retired as district malaria officer in 1994.
Records suggest the state had handed over 5.62 acres to the railways in March 1950. In 1984, one Chhedi Lal filed a suit in a lower court claiming that the land was his. The court gave a judgment in his favour in 1988. The railways challenged the order in HC, which ruled in its favour in 2016.