“April is the cruellest month....” indeed for lakhs of urban poor of Jharkhand. In the scorching summer heat of April-May, the NDA Government of Jharkhand has been using brutal force to evict them from government/PSU land, leaving them homeless and without a roof over their heads. People protesting these evictions have been subjected to police firing, which has claimed lives and injured many in Dhanbad, Ranchi and Bokaro. Most of the evicted people are poor workers, who have settled since several decades on the surplus land belonging to PSUs.
Overall nearly 5,00,000 people are slated to be evicted or affected by these evictions in coming times. The evictions have come about in the wake of a High Court verdict ordering clearing of encroachments from land belonging to government and PSUs. The Government is pleading that it is bound by the orders of the Court. But this plea cannot hold any water. For one thing, why could the government not have ensured appropriate rehabilitation and resettlement? Further, why is the government evicting the poor while more powerful people who have grabbed land are not being touched?
On 5 April, in Islamnagar in the state capital Ranchi, people had settled on around 20 acres of government land. The Government served an order of eviction and started bulldozing even without giving people a chance to appeal for more time. Still, people appealed in the HC and the HC did grant them a relaxation. Yet, on the very morning when the HC’s response was due, the Government assembled the bulldozers and police force. Most of the homes were bulldozed by the time HC order relaxing the deadline came about! Police fired on people of this settlement (mostly minorities) protested the eviction, killing two.
In Ranchi, people who eke out a living as street vendors are being evicted with all brutality but the powerful business people are spared. A big company Usha Martin has encroached on 80 decimals of land to make a gymkhana. The company applied for and got three months of grace from the HC. The HC actually showered praise on the company and asked others to similarly ‘volunteer’ to step back from encroachments. A commercial gymkhana is equated with the hutments of the poor, and while the former gets grace period, the latter are forcibly evicted at gunpoint! Similarly vegetable vendors near the Court premises were evicted with bulldozers within ten days of the expiry of the lease, while the Government allowed Tatas to maintain their commercial empire for ten years without renewal of the lease! Not just that, the lease of the Tatas was renewed after a decade, with a waiver of Rs 5000 crore worth of dues!
In the PSU land too, the officials and politicians who have failed to vacate quarters or built homes illegally on empty plots have not been touched; while workers and poor people have been evicted on a massive scale. In the HEC, Ranchi, massive street protests have forced the Government to halt the eviction proceedings temporarily. But thousands have been evicted from PSU land and four killed in police firing in Bokaro. In the same Bokaro, flats grabbed by Shibu Soren and JVM leader Samaresh Singh remain untouched, and some of these premises are being used for commercial purposes – yet the government is yet to even serve a notice of eviction! But workers have been forcibly evicted from quarters and hutments demolished, rendering thousands of poor families homeless.
The ruling class opposition in Jharkhand is playing politics but displaying hypocrisy on the issue of eviction. The Congress is striking a posture of resistance to evictions. But on the issue of PSU lands, surely the Congress-led Government at the Centre could intervene if it chose?! Similarly Babulal Marandi, the first CM of the state, is also playing the politics of hunger-strike and protest. The people of the state have not forgotten that he presided over the brutal police firing on tribals protesting eviction at Doranda and Tapkara!
The CPI(ML) Liberation and other Left parties and people’s movements have launched a state-wide resistance to the ongoing evictions and repression. On 7 April, a state-wide protest was held, and a Rajbhawan March on 25 April. On 2 May, a very successful Jharkhand Bandh was observed.
