JAMMU, July 13: Twenty-seven years after they were forced to vacate Chhamb in the wake of Indo-Pak war, the residents of this fertile tract that was ceded to Pakistan under the 1972 Shimla Accord, are still running from pillar to post to get their dues.Many of the about 4,300 families which could not return home are awaiting rehabilitation promised to them years back.The recommendations of the body set up for their resettlement in 1974 are yet to be fully implemented. Tired of attempts to move the insensitive officialdom, these mostly illiterate and poor displaced persons (DPs) are now knocking the doors of courts.Unlike the other 1.50 lakh persons inhabiting about 380 villages that were uprooted by the 1971 war, Chhamb residents could not return home as most of their land, estimated at 37,000 acres, where Pakistan had always enjoyed a strategic advantage, was given by India under the Line of Control delineation of 1972 in lieu of advantageous positions elsewhere.The persons uprooted from Chhambwere put up in refugee camps at Krishanpur and Narwal, about 60 km from Jammu, till their rehabilitation for which the Chhamb Displaced Persons Rehabilitation Authority (CDPRA) was set up in 1974 with the J&K chief secretary as its chairman. Against the 20 villages in which these 17,400 persons stayed in the Chhamb niabat (manned by niab tehsildar), the CDPRA in its rehabilitation award of 1976 scattered them over 129 bastis in seven tehsils in border areas of Jammu and Kathua districts.But this was just beginning of their problems.The meagre cash relief, which was to continue till they harvested their first crop, was stopped as soon as they shifted to the bastis. The government limited the extent of compensation to 6 acres of irrigated land and four acres of unirrigated area. Corruption and blatant table-allotments by revenue authorities meant that a large number of displaced persons either did not get the land or got what was in physical possession of others. Shanti Devi,now living in a shanty house in Danwal, Akhnoor tehsil, whose family was among the richest in Chhamb with 182 canals of land, did not get any agricultural land during the initial allotment in 1976 even though the records suggested so. She and her husband did petty jobs to raise their four sons and three daughters and recently have, after a long struggle, got compensation of Rs 32,000 for their land.Many others also got less then their due. Following complaints, a review was done that identified 699 families as having got land deficient of what had been promised.The Centre ultimately decided to give cash compensation in deficiency cases and against the recommended prices varying from Rs 2,000 to Rs 29,000, set a maximum compensation limit of Rs 5,000 for a canal of irrigated land. An idea of the working of the state bureaucracy can be had from the fact that of the Rs 4.60 crore sanctioned in 1990 for distribution among 699 families, the first installment of Rs 1 crore was paid only in 1995 and the secondinstallment of Rs 1.25 crore only this year.The DPs complain that first they were given less and substandard land and the compensation too has been meagre. Denying the claim of DPs for quota, officials in the Divisional Commissioner office here, who refused to be quoted, said that since the displaced persons had been resettled along the international border (IB), they couldn't be considered for LoC quota.Asked about the six-year delay in the disbursement of rehabilitation amount, the officials said that the Home Ministry had been insisting on an audit report of the money given and as the report was not easily forthcoming, further installments also were not released.Admitting possible table-allotments by junior revenue officials, they said that the complaints could have been redressed had the victims approached them. Expressing surprise over the Chhamb displaced not having proprietary rights so far, the officials admitted that the demand was genuine.Meanwhile, acting on the left-outs' plea thestate High Courts sent repeated directions to the administration. And, following this the divisional commissioner's office here wrote to the revenue authorities on the need of preparing a supplementary list of the left-outs. More than a year later, a reply is still pending.Losing on education as a result of displacement has taken a heavy price of DPs lives.At least three persons have lost their lives in fights over impugned lands with the locals. Their being scattered over seven disparate tehsils has prevented any effective political mobilisation. As the land they have been given is mostly substandard, majority of them eke out a living as labourers.
