Meghalaya government’s latest attempt to evict Dalit
Sikhs from Harijan Colony located at the heart of state capital Shillong is all
set to gain fresh momentum when a sub-committee headed by urban affairs
minister Hamletson Dohling will submit its report to the High-Level committee
formed by the state government to suggest measures for relocating the Sikh
residents of the area.
The issue has raised heckles in Punjab with the
Congress-led state government sending a delegation to Shillong last year under
minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa to take up the matter with Meghalaya
authorities. The Punjab government step was preceded by a visit to Shillong by
a SGPC team from Amritsar who met Meghalaya Home Minister James Sangma and
urged him to stop the attempts being made to “relocate” the Sikh residents of
Harijan Colony.
According to Gurjit Singh, chief of Harijan Panchayat Committee and a spokesman of the Dalit Sikhs of Shillong’s Harijan Colony, the land in question was granted to a group of people (ancestors of the current residents) by the then tribal chief of the area more than 150 years back. Disregarding the history of the settlement, the Shillong Municipal Board and other official agencies are now asking for proof of individual ownership of the plots and ramshackle structures used by the Dalit Sikhs as residences.
So far the courts have always upheld the Sikhs’ right over the area.
The ancestors of Dalit Sikhs living in the colony had come primarily from Gurdaspur area of Punjab.
