PALLIA, AUG 5: ``They come here for a week during the sowing season and go back to Ludhiana. They come again for a day or two to irrigate their fields, and again for a week to harvest the crop,'' says Sardar Teja Singh of Dalnagar village in Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh.Going by his statement, farming has become a part-time job for a large number of non-residential farmers in the Terai region of the State.Teja Singh was speaking about Ajaib Singh, Rajendra Singh, Kuldeep Singh, Budh Singh, Arjun Singh and ``many others'' who live in Punjab but have land in Dalnagar village in Kheri district.A large number of land-owners in Kheri, Pilibhit and Udhamsingh Nagar districts have been living in Haryana, Punjab, the UK and the United States while their local relatives till the land for them. As per information of the district administration, Teja Singh owns about 400 acres of land. He procured a stay order from the High Court when the district administration allotted pattas to 28 landless labourers from eastern Uttar Pradesh.Talking to The Indian Express, Teja Singh insisted he owned only 12.5 acres of land as prescribed under the Land Ceiling Act of the State. He said he had equal land in the name of each of his four sons and widowed mother.So, whose land was it then which had been leased out to the labourers, against which he procured a stay order from the High Court? ``It belongs to Ajaib Singh, Rajendra Singh, Kuldeep Singh, Budh Singh, Arjun Singh and so many others who live in Ludhiana and occasionally come here and stay with me to tend to their fields,'' he claimed. However, he does not know the Punjab addresses of these persons. The district administration terms these names as ``fictitious''.Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal himself has about 80 acres of land at Ranjit Nagar near Bajpur in the Udham Singh Nagar district. His uncle, Harchand Singh Brar, owns over 200 acres of land at the same place, in the name of his relatives living in Punjab's Muktsar district.``We cultivate their lands here and they cultivate ours in Giddarbaha and the benefits are divided accordingly,'' Brar claims. Badal is the grandson of Brar's father, Puran Singh's sister. He had leased out the land to a local farmer, Harkewal Singh, about three years ago. The land has been lying uncultivated since last year because Harkewal, already burdened with work on his own land, refused to cultivate Badal's fields.All major land-holders allege harassment on the part of the State Government. ``The Government is not honouring the court orders staying allotment of pattas from our lands,'' said Teja Singh's son, Guru Kripal Singh.District Magistrate, Kheri, K M Sant, however, refuted the allegation by claiming that he had not touched the 17,500 acres of land disputed in eitherappellate court or the High Court. Of this, 8,500 acres was in possession of Sikh land-holders like Teja Singh, he claimed.``We are allotting the surplus land taken away from big farmers to landless Sikhs, mostly belonging to lower castes like Majhabi, Rai Sikh, Ramdasia Sikh, Saini, Lohar, Kahar etc. So where is the question of harassment of the community? Large number of Sikhs were benefitting from the same land instead of a handful affluent ones,'' he said.In fact, it is the fear of the Land Ceiling Act being enforced in letter and spirit by the Mayawati Government which has made the affluent Sikh farmers cry wolf, he said.Political observers see this as an attempt by the Chief Minister to woo low-caste Sikhs, both in UP and Punjab, by leasing them out surplus land from affluent Jat Sikhs - the vote base of the ruling Akali Dal in Punjab.
