Army asked to pay up in Kalimpong

Kalimpong : Seven families in Pedong have asked the Indian Army to pay up for the land it has been using since 1965.

In a suit filed in Calcutta High Court recently, the seven, mostly tribal families have demanded that the army either release the land or acquire it at the present market rate.

Land prices at Pedong, 20km from here, have shot up ever since it was developed as a tourist spot.

The plot measuring about 15.40 acres, the petition said, was part of a huge chunk of agricultural and homestead land belonging to 35 families and was occupied by the army during the Chinese aggression in 1965.

In 1970, the army formally acquired the portion owned by 28 families by paying compensation according to the market rate then.

However, for some reasons, the army chose not to work out a similar arrangement with the remaining seven families. Much later, on August 13, 1976, the army signed a lease agreement with the seven families for the use of the land for a period of 10 years from October 28, 1975 to October 28, 1985 at a yearly rent of Rs 66 per acre.

When the lease period ended in 1985, the army failed to renew the agreement and continued to hold possession of the land without paying any rent. The repeated requests of the families went unheard, the petition said. It was only after Darjeeling MP Dawa Narbula intervened on their behalf that the army started paying the rent again, but no fresh lease agreement was signed.

“The last of such rent was paid on 19.10.2006 at the rate of Rs 950 (approx) per acre,” reads the petition. On April 4, 2007, the seven claimants sent a letter through their advocate requesting the army to either restore their land to them, or buy it.

In response, the army on April 28, 2007 wrote that it was willing to acquire the land at the prevailing market rate (a copy of the letter is with The Telegraph).

However, when army representatives met the seven claimants in Kalimpong in June, the rate of compensation offered was reportedly far below the current land price in Pedong, which according to the petition, is about Rs 50 lakh to Rs 55 lakh per acre.

“We have been reduced to being refugees on our own land for no fault of ours,” said Arjun Lama Bomjan, one of the petitioners.

The other six claimants are Chunku Tshering Bhutia, Bimal Moktan, Pasang Bhutia, Phurba Dorjee Tamang (Moktan), Mani Lal Sapkota and Nima Wangdi Bhutia.

Source: The Telegraph