Varanasi land grab, a brutal makeover of the holy city

Land acquisition is taking place at a frenetic pace both within Varanasi and outside in the adjoining villages as the state works overtime to evict organisations and farmers in order to implement the Tughlaqi farmaan (edict) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Varanasi, it seems, must become even more of a tourist hub than it is — whether the infrastructure of this ancient city can handle it or no.

On 23 September, Modi paid a lightning visit to North India’s favourite temple town to lay the foundation stone of the international cricket stadium to be built in the village of Ganjari, Rajatalab, at a cost of Rs 450 crore. It is to be spread over 32 acres. Since the bureaucracy wanted to push the project through at lightning speed, this slab of prime agricultural land was acquired at a price four times the circle rate.

Amit Patel, the pradhan (headman) of Ganjari says, “The farmers here are very happy because they received four times the circle rate. But no compensation was given for the 1.5-acre gram sabha (village council) land that was acquired for the stadium. The village could have received some compensation to be spent on upgrading our meagre health or educational facilities…”

“Members of the gram panchayat led by me did all the preparatory and organisational work for the stadium inauguration,” Patel continues, “but no one was invited for the function. The 16 women from our village who had received gas cylinders under the Ujjwala scheme and those who had Ayshuman Bharat cards received invitations. When they saw that their pradhan was not invited, they refused to attend the ceremony in order to express their displeasure.”

The majority of farmers are not as fortunate as the farmers of Ganjari, though, because they are largely being arm-twisted to either give up their land without any compensation or sell it to the government at throwaway rates. “Already orders have been issued by the district magistrate that no further registration of land will take place in the neighbouring villages of Harsod, Hardaspur, Mehendiganj and Ganjari,” says Patel.

Farmers of these villages see the ban on sale of land as an ominous sign that the government plans to acquire them soon. Most do not want to lose their agricultural holdings.

In the case of Jalupur village, located within Varanasi district, notices were served to the owners informing them that since their land was banjar (barren), it was state property and would be acquired—without the ‘owners’ receiving a paisa in compensation. But most of the original owners are long dead and from the 1950s onwards, these passels of land have been sold to new parties who are horrified by this turn of events.

“We have been ploughing this land from the 1950s with our fathers having bought this land from the original owners who are long dead. Chakbandi (consolidation against fragmentation) for this land has been done and the names of the new owners are there in the land records,” points out Amrit Chauhan, the pradhan of Jalupur.

“The original owners are long dead but the notification that the land was allegedly banjar was sent in their names. The present owners were informed by a lawyer who happened to receive this notification on behalf of his dead client,” says Chauhan.

Farmers from the villages of Kosi, Milkopur, Tofapur and Saryein are also being forced to give up their land in a similar way.

Three affected farmers from Jalupur approached the sub-divisional magistrate, but their case was dismissed without even a hearing. Mahendra Jaiswal, a farmer in this area whose land is also being taken over, is planning to file an appeal in the Allahabad High Court. He had been wanting to set up a deemed university on his land. But given the way land acquisitions are being bulldozed through, he is no longer sure it will be possible.

Two areas where protests against land acquisition have intensified are the villages surrounding the Varanasi airport and the neighbourhood of Transport Nagar. The Uttar Pradesh government is keen to expand the Varanasi airport, so the state machinery has informed villagers living around the airport to vacate the land. However, the local villagers have been unrelenting in their protests. With the Lok Sabha polls around the corner and thus some fear of adverse publicity amongst the ruling dispensation, the airport expansion project has presently been put on hold.

Another pet project of the state government calls for acquiring agricultural land in and around Transport Nagar. The government wants to create a network of roads outside Varanasi, with special expressways that will connect Varanasi to Bundelkhand and Mathura. There will be several malls and shopping centres along the road, including one being touted as twice the size of Lucknow’s Lulu Mall.

“Already lakhs of trees have been felled,” says Laxman Maurya, who has been leading protests for the rights of farmers. “Any farmer who raises his voice in protest is being accused of being a ‘Naxalite’,” he adds.

Similarly, 12 km from Jalupur is the village of Shahanshahpur, where the government has again served notice for land acquisition. The farmers here are also protesting, and claim they will fight to their last breath rather than give up their land.

Land acquisition is also taking place in a big way en route to Sarnath.

It is not just farmers who are affected by this indiscriminate land grab, however. The Tathaghat Vihar Charitable Trust, which runs an 80-acre lush green Bauddha Vihar as a Buddhist spiritual development centre on the Ganga riverfront in Ramnagar, was asked to vacate the land. It is designated for the establishment of warehouses for the use of the Inland Waterways Authority as part of a grandiose multi-modal transport hub.

Vidhyadhar Maurya, joint secretary and managing trustee, took the matter to the courts and got a stay on the takeover. “I knocked at the doors of the Allahabad High Court four months ago and have managed to get a stay,” said Maurya, but he remains apprehensive for the future.

Another inter-modal hub that aims to combine rail, road and river transport is being developed near Rajghat. Since this will require around 31 acres, land for this scheme was ruthlessly acquired by grabbing the 8.7 acres belonging to the Sarva Seva Sangh, an organisation that promotes Gandhian teachings. The remaining 21 acres is reportedly going to be acquired from the Krishnamurti Foundation, whose prime property spread over 300 acres lies adjacent to the Sarva Seva Sangh.

Social unrest due to indiscriminate land acquisition is on the rise across eastern Uttar Pradesh, in fact. In nearby Azamgarh, an agitation has been in progress for the past year or more, with farmers on the warpath over the government’s insistence on acquiring 670 acres of land to expand the Mandur Azamgarh airstrip. This will require the bulldozing of only 4,000 homes across eight villages. The women of the village have been holding daily demonstrations in the Khiriya Bagh area of Azamgarh under a Makan Bachao Khet Bachao banner.

Several prominent farmers’ leaders and social workers, including Rakesh Tikait, Medha Patkar and Magsaysay-awardee Sandeep Pandey have come out in support of the farmers.

Addressing a gathering, Medha Patkar of the National Alliance of People’s Movements said the administration was violating provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013. Per this law, Patkar points out, the administration must have the consent of 80 per cent of the local landowners to acquire any area.

Aflatoon, a social activist heading the Samajwadi Jan Parishad points out, “This indiscriminate land acquisition is destroying the soul of Varanasi, which has been a centre of learning and spiritual development over the centuries."

But of course, a tourism hub that offers more headline grabs and photo ops, as well as possibly some useful electoral bonds, is easier to bank on, literally, than temples, stupas and universities. Those, especially the last, are dangerous breeding grounds for civil disobedience and rights activism, we hear.