Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the State government’s ambitious programme of upgrading tandas, hattis, and palyas (human settlements or hamlets of the oppressed Banjara community) into revenue villages by distributing land rights documents to the dwellers at a public meeting on the outskirts of Malkhed in Kalaburagi district on Thursday.
The meeting was organised by the State government to distribute a record 52,072 land titles to the beneficiaries from 342 tandas in five districts of Bidar, Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Raichur, and Vijayapura. Mr. Modi symbolically handed over the title certificates to five families from Kalaburagi district — three from Chincholi taluk and one each from Kamalapur and Sedam taluk — to launch the programme.
“Banjara [Lambani] community has suffered a lot of inconveniences. Now, the time has come for them to lead their lives with dignity. The Karnataka government has taken a very important decision to upgrade over 3,000 tandas and other settlements into revenue villages. I would like to congratulate Mr. Bommai and his team for this,” Mr. Modi said. He obliquely attacked the Congress for seeing people in these settlements as “vote bank” and not addressing their ownership issues.
Attack on previous govts.
“The proposal [for upgrading] was made in 1993, three decades ago. The party which ruled the State for a majority of the period after that concentrated on developing a vote bank. It never thought of making the lives of these people better. People struggled hard to get their rights and underwent many hardships. Now, the BJP government has changed that. I would like to tell you, the Banjara mothers, not to worry anymore as one of your sons is in Delhi,” Mr. Modi said.
“Since the families have now got ownership titles, getting loans from banks will be easier. Under the Svamitva Yojna, the Union government is issuing property cards to people in rural areas based on their properties,” he said.
Record
At the request of the district administration, a team from the World Book of Records was present at the meeting and recorded the distribution of titles, which is claimed to be the highest number of such records to be given in one go. Vice-president of the World Book of Records Vasanth Kavita gave a provisional certificate to Revenue Minister R. Ashok and Kalaburagi Deputy Commissioner Yeshwanth Gurukar.
