By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Ex-MLA of Mawprem and former Minister Manas Chaudhuri on Wednesday brushed aside allegations against him leveled by the Greater Laban Community Development Society (GLCDS) with regard to the illegal possession of government land at Rilbong while terming the allegations as motivated and politically oriented aiming at finishing his political career.
“We are not land grabbers and we don’t even claim ownership over the land that we are currently occupying as this land is and has been under the supervision of a committee led by the Deputy Commissioner, formed under the Evacuee Property Management Act for 60 years now,” Chaudhuri clarified on the allegations here on Wednesday.
Chaudhuri informed that the case has been pending in the court of the Deputy Commissioner for almost 20 years now and the delay lies in the government’s court as it, being a complainant is on sticky ground.
“Meanwhile, we will produce whatever documents the government wants,” Chaudhuri asserted.
Narrating the history of the land, the former legislator said that his father, (L) PN Chaudhuri had occupied the land as a tenant of a committee led by the Deputy Commissioner in 1953 when its owner Intia Zuddin Ahmed left for East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) sometime in the late 1950s.
“As this was not an isolated case at that time when India got its Independence, the Union government had constituted the Evacuee Property Management Act in 1950 and the same was adopted by Assam government in 1951 and followed by Meghalaya in 1973 after it achieved its statehood,” Chaudhuri said adding that such lands would be under the care of the committee constituted under the said Act.
“After the formation of the committee, my father had always paid the monthly rent until Meghalaya came into being in 1972 when Assam moved out and the committee followed suit,” he said even while maintaining that after the committee moved out, they stopped paying rent as Assam could not collect rent for land in Meghalaya.
“The Meghalaya government did not do anything in this regard and we continued to occupy the land as tenants until 1981 and 1983 when I had written letters to the Revenue department on the matter but no legal actions were taken by the government then,” Chaudhuri elaborated.
It was only in 1994 that the then Deputy Commissioner of East Khasi Hills had issued notice to Chaudhuri asking him to vacate the land within 15 days.
“We however, objected and filed a petition in the Gauhati High Court which directed that the matter may be heard by the Court of the Deputy Commissioner,” he added.
Presuming the sudden move of the government to issue a notification in 1994 as a result of personal grudge, Chaudhuri said that the notification could have been due to the news reports continuously hitting on the issue of Meghalaya House in Kolkata which appeared in The Shillong Times during those years.
Claiming that he had never misused his power as a journalist or an MLA, Chaudhuri said, “The court will do justice to me and whatever the verdict, I will accept it all as I know that I am going as per the law.”
“If my family had wanted to grab the land, they could have done so since at that time the North Eastern Reorganization Act, 1971 was not there and Meghalaya was yet to get its statehood,” Chaudhuri stated.
“If we had wanted, my father, my brother (L) Ardhendu Chaudhuri or me could have manipulated the whole matter and could have easily claimed ownership of the land but we didn’t do so as we are not selfish and I am here to give my best to the land I was born in,” Chaudhuri added.