Ram Singh, a venerable former sarpanch of Ullawas village, looks around unceasingly, boiling with despair as the void stares back at him. Like Singh, every face in the village is contested by many feelings at once — from agony to anger, staring straight at their face an uncertain future.
Ullawas has been home to over 100 families, who took pride in tilling their farmland to earn their living. It is now on the verge of losing livelihood to the frenzied urbanisation plans of the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Haryana government.
At the centre of the recent protests against forced land acquisition in the area is a five-acre plot leased out to the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust for 33 years to build an eye hospital and a cancer unit.
For the common villager, the plot symbolises all that they stand to lose and how the Trust, having Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi on its board, gains from it.
The Haryana government’s decision to keep the five-acre Trust land out of its acquisition plans has drawn the villagers’ ire. The state government had issued a notice to acquire 500 acres in Ullawas two years ago, including temple land, houses and even the village cremation site, that it plans to hand over to private builders for residential apartments.
Soon after the state government issued the notice under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, the locals sold their land in panic at half the market rates.
“We got Rs 55,000 per acre from the government, while the prevailing market rate at the time was Rs 5 crore per acre,” said Sehej Ram a village elder.
On the other hand, the Rajiv Gandhi Trust had got the land on a lease rent of Rs 15 lakh per year. Villagers alleged even this money did not reach them.
“We get just the interest of about Rs 8,000 per year,” says Sahaj Ram another village elder, whose land will also be acquired. “We have been cheated and the then sarpanch was threatened and coaxed into agreeing to the lease deed of the trust.”
Much before the acquisition notice was put out by the state government, Ram Singh was left with just half an acre of the five acres of land he owned along with his brothers, when a road leading to the CRPF camp in Gurgaon’s sector 62 was carved out of his property.
Now, the former sarpanch of the village, is on the verge of losing even that piece of land worth half a crore to a fresh land acquisition notice.
Like most other villagers, Ram Singh had moved court but his petition was dismissed. The despair is imminent in his voice when he says: “They (Rahul and Sonia Gandhi) sat at home and the Haryana government excluded their foundation’s land from acquisition, while our land is being acquired though we went to court.”
His brother, Dharam, sarpanch, also a former village head, adds with anger that was missing in the old man: “We will not let any foundation touch the five acres of village land. Even if 500 people have to lay down their lives, we will not let those five acres go.”
The villagers say they were not consulted when the five acres of village land was acquired by Haryana Urban Development Authority for the Rajiv Gandhi trust and another 1.25 acres for a family doctor of the Gandhis. The sarpanch and the panchayat members were summoned by the District Collector of Gurgaon and were asked to give their consent or “bear the consequences”.
According to the former sarpanches, Dharam and Ram Singh, the Rs 15,00,000 is a pittance for a land which was selling for Rs 5 crore an acre when the lease was granted.
“Why do the Gandhis have to form trusts and take land on lease for a hospital? Why can’t they just buy land at market rates and build whatever they want?” asks Dharam Singh. “They have cheated us of this land by taking it almost free of cost . And, the money stays with the district collector, who only gives us the interest which is about Rs 8,000 a year.”
The villagers held protests this week next to the Trust site, taking turns to cirticise the “special privilege” the top Congress leadership enjoyed from the Congress government in Haryana, while land belonging to poor and helpless villagers was being acquired.
Congress national spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters the land was taken on lease at the then market rate and annual payments were being handed over to the authority.
“The hospital is for the villagers.” But villagers begged to differ. “Who are they building this hospital for? When the entire village was being acquired by HUDA through these eviction notices to build residential complexes, how will it serve us?”
“We will not give up our ownership rights. We should have a share in every development on our land,” say the villagers in unison.
The petition before the Punjab & Haryana High Court that brought the issue to light has no representation from the village. “Those petitioners are outsiders who have bought land from us. Now 55 of the 65 petitioners have withdrawn their petitions. This is all a fraud stage-managed by the government,” say villagers.
