It is disgusting to know that land grabbers having no qualms of conscience are not sparing even the railway land without encroachment. Railways, the most vital means of communication in our country are the very life line of our survival. Encroaching upon the railway land means that the land grabbers do not have even an iota of nationalist spirit left with them. At certain locations, these encroachments cause bottlenecks and safety hazard in train operations and difficulties in maintenance which at times affect the line capacity ultimately affecting the revenue of railways.
It has often been seen that the poor workers living in jhuggis and jhonparis make shanties on vacant stretches of land close to a railway track in big cities where they easily find work. They can be removed without much hassles but the problem is with those land grabbers who are influential and have political clout of money power to persist with their land grabbing activities. In such cases the rules of the Railways have to be invoked and cases registered. The railway police does keep an eye on land grabbers but at the same time it is also advisable that the railways begin an information campaign to alert the people against illegal activity of land grabbing.
In a statement given in the Parliament, the Minister of State for Railways said that over 206 hectares of Northern Railway’s land was under encroachment. A total of 206.37 hectares of land is under encroachment in Northern Railway including Jammu and Kashmir as on March this year. The menace of encroachment seems to be on rapid increase essentially because there is not exemplary punishment for the land grabbers and they get encouraged. We have repeatedly said that land grabbing happens usually because the officials and functionaries fall a prey to corrupt practices and without their connivance land grabbing is not possible. Unless the government takes severest action against them the menace will be uprooted.
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