SHILLONG: The UDP has said that the Government should continue to maintain status quo on the land in question at Umsawli village and allow the affected families evicted from the land to reside in the area until the dispute is settled in the court of law.
“We would want the Government to maintain status quo over the land in Umsawli till the court gives a final judgement. We would also want the Government to stop any future eviction till the matter is settled,” UDP Shillong city general secretary Allantry F Dkhar, who is also the chairman of the three-member fact finding committee looking into the controversial eviction drive at Umsawli, informed here on Monday.
He said that at present, there are claims and counter-claim by both the MUDA and the local settlers over the ownership of this land.
It may be mentioned that the State Government has already decided to maintain status quo at Umsawli and Urban Affairs Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh had said that the affected families should not take up any activity on the land even as the government will desist from conducting any eviction drive until the matter is resolved by the court of law.
According to Lyngdoh, when the court dismissed their case in 2010 the families did not contest. “And as per the documents available with the deputy commissioner the five families were not in the notified list of land owners,” she had said.
Meanwhile, Dkhar said that the fact finding committee has been given an extension till the time they received the RTI findings from MUDA.
Informing that the documents received from MUDA was not enough to come to a decision, he said the committee is planning to file an RTI to avail more information on the land documents possessed by the Urban Affairs department.
It may be mentioned that the committee had been asked to collect all the relevant records and information relating to the claim and counter-claims of both MUDA and local settlers.