20 years on, no land yet for state’s Kargil martyrs

Dehradun: After a 20-year-long wait, some families of Kargil conflict martyrs in Uttarakhand are yet receive a plot of land reportedly promised by the then Uttar Pradesh (UP) government in 1999. And their wait continues. Even after Uttarakhand was carved out as a new state in 2000, successive governments in both the states have failed to live up to their promises.

Sharing her unhappiness, widow of Mekh Bahadur Gurung, Naini, said: “At that time, we were promised five bigha of land in a rural area for agriculture. But, we are still waiting for the land. I have no complaints against the Army. They have taken care of me and my family.”

Naina lives in Gahri Cantt with her only son. Mekh Gurung was one of the first causalities of the Kargil conflict. He was part of the early raiding party of Army personnel which went up to recce the border posts that were already occupied by Pakistani troops in 1999.

Echoing similar sentiment, Shanti Rawat, widow of Devinder Singh Rawat, who laid down his life during the Kargil conflict, said: “Ideally the state government should have given the land to all the martyrs’ families. I did not get any land, but there are a few families who got some land.”

Kuldip Bhandari, whose elder brother Jaideep Singh Bhandari is a Kargil martyr, said: “We got a land in 2000. However, it was disputed since there were illegal occupants. After raising the matter with the state government at a public meeting of chief minister BC Khanduri, we got it sorted out. And we got possession of the land.”

City-based lawyer N K Gusain, who has taken up cases of martyrs’ families with the state government, said, “It is unfortunate that 20 years have passed and still there are many martyrs’ families and dependents who did not get what they were promised by the then government.”

In the over two-month Kargil conflict, 75 martyrs belonged to Uttarakhand, which at that time was part of UP. The state was carved out a year later in 2000.