NEW DELHI, July 11: Is the demand of the Shiromani Akali Dal leaders for exclusion of Udham Singh Nagar from the proposed Uttaranchal State more political in nature than emotional, as they have been claiming?Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in Uttar Pradesh have been questioning the timing of the Akali demand: just before the Uttaranchal Bill was to be tabled in Parliament. ``If they were so concerned about the Sikhs' interests, they could have pointed it out to us when the UP Assembly passed resolutions to create Uttaranchal - in 1990, 1992 and 1994 - or when the Union cabinet cleared the Bill last year,'' said a senior state BJP leader. Observers feel the demand has been raised, apparently, to score a point over the Congress in Punjab. Leader of the Opposition in Punjab Assembly Rajinder Kaur Bhattal has been raking up the issue inside the Assembly and at her meetings with the Prime Minister and the President, putting the Akalis on the defensive.The SAD delegation, led by Punjab Chief Minister ParkashSingh Badal, which met Prime Minister AB Vajpayee two days ago, apparently conveyed to him that raising the demand was their political compulsion and the BJP leaders agreed.``We cannot reject SAD's demand outright because the Udham Singh Nagar issue has occupied centrestage in Punjab politics and Shiromani Akali Dal is our ally,'' Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana told The Indian Express.SAD leaders admit that the need to counter Congress propaganda in Punjab and to protect the land of big Sikh farmers from being subjected to a ceiling if Udham Singh Nagar went to Uttaranchal were the reasons for raising the demand. They, however, claim that they would not rock the BJP's boat at the Centre.BJP leaders, too, reciprocate by justifying SAD's demand. ``The Sikhs settled in Terai in the 1960s when the land there was marshy, annually ravaged by floods and infested by mosquitoes and wild beasts. They have toiled all these years making the land cultivable. It won't be just to deprivethem of their profits now,'' Khurana said, adding that apart form Sikh land-owners, there were Bengali and Bangladeshi settlers as well in the region.There are indeed Bengali settlers in Terai but they are yet to get possession of the land, pattas of which were given to them by UP Government decades ago. Their lands are, in fact, tilled by the influential Sikh farmers who bribe revenue officials to evade the law.Besides, large tracts of land are owned by non-resident farmers who are mostly living either abroad or in Punjab. Their relatives settled in the Terai, till the land. No wonder some of the farmhouses in Terai measure 100 to 1,000 acres though the land ceiling limit in UP is only 12.5 acres.If despite all this bonhomie the BJP cannot accede to the Akalis' demand, it is because of its own political compulsions. The BJP now holds sway over the hilly region in the State. It won 17 out of 19 Assembly seats there in the last elections. Leaving Udham Singh Nagar out of Uttaranchal is bound to angerthe local people who might reject the party at the hustings next time.A number of pro-Uttarakhand organisations have already warned that they would launch an agitation if the Akali demand was conceded.
