A day after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan raised allegations of “bulldozer raj” in Karnataka after around 300 families were evicted from Bengaluru’s Faqir Colony and Waseem Layout, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar defended the action, saying it was a government land which was encroached illegally and advised Pinarayi against issuing statements without ascertaining facts.
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Siddaramaiah said the action was necessary against the illegal occupation of government land. In Delhi, Siddaramaiah said that since 2019, people were living unauthorised on a five-acre plot designated for solid waste management. “…There is no safety there. So officials served notice to illegal occupants asking them to vacate. As they failed to vacate, they were evicted,” he said. He said he has asked the Greater Bengaluru Authority Chief Commissioner and the Secretary of the Urban Development Department to make alternative arrangements for those evicted “because most of them are migrants”. “They have come here from other places, but from the human point of view, we have to make alternative arrangements and provide them a dwelling.”
Shivakumar said Saturday that an eviction drive was carried out to remove people who had encroached on government land which was notified for solid waste management. “It is a quarry pit, a dangerous place with a lot of health hazards. They tried to occupy it illegally.”
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On Friday, Vijayan posted on X on last week’s eviction, “The bulldozing of Faqir Colony and Waseem Layout in Bengaluru, uprooting Muslim families who have lived there for years, exposes the brutal normalisation of ‘bulldozer raj’. Sadly, the Sangh Parivar’s anti-minority politics is being executed under a Congress government in Karnataka…” Hitting back, Shivakumar said, “We are not into bulldozer (justice). We have not done anything using bulldozers. We tried to vacate (encroachers) and protect the public place.” He also said Vijayan should not comment about the matter “without knowing the facts… These are political gimmicks ahead of state elections (in Kerala).”
Shivakumar stated that if the displaced people had valid documents, the government would sanction them houses. “If anyone wants houses, definitely we will give them. We have planned lakhs of houses. Discussions are on to rehabilitate those genuinely affected, but not those who just want to occupy government land,” he said. On Tuesday, BJP leader Bhaskar Rao alleged in a post on social media that bulldozers and the police flattened the houses without any notice.
With PTI inputs