Land to be identified to rehabilitate dhara owners: CM

Shimla, Jul 30 (UNI) Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbahdra Singh today said suitable land is being identified within the Shimla Municipal Corporation limits to rehabilitate dhara owners who were evicted from houses constructed in forest areas.

The state government was only complying with the state high court orders on evicting all people from forest areas of the town, he told a deputation of the dhara owners, led local legislator Harbhajan Singh Bhajji, who called on him here.

Mr Singh said a special drive had been launched to remove encroachments to prevent the town's heritage and historical status adding that a major portion of forest land has been freed from all encroachments.

The state government would take a lenient attitude towards the dhara owners which were yet to surrender their structures for demolition, he said.

He said efforts were on to identify suitable land to rehabilitate bonafide Himachali families which had built temporary or permanent structures on the government and forest lands.

The identification of all such families had been completed and once the actual requirement of land for rehabilitation of genuine families was worked out, the process of rehabilitation would be initiated, he said.

The Chief Minister said a new location would be developed in a planned manner where all the basic amenities of water supply, electricity, health and education would be made available to them.

Besides all possible assistance would also be provided to the dhara owners to construct the new houses after observing all the required formalities, he said.

He said the genuineness of the families would be ascertained before allotting them land possibly in the periphery of Shimla town strictly confirming to the TCP and MC norms.

UNI