jaswindersandhu@rogers.com
slathabhaskaran@hotmail.com
Water Resources Department, Government of Rajasthan
Engineer-in-chief (Rtd)
profosr_sa@yahoo.co.in
Sunder Nagar, Himachal Pradesh
Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Nashik
shastri.ravindra@mahindra.com
Dehradun, Uttarakhand
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ERRATUM
The dateline of 'Not ready for rabi' (November 16-30, 2008) is Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, not Haryana as mentioned.
We regret the error.
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Witness
A 'private' hill station
I read your article on the Lavasa project ('Howl of the hill', September 1-15, 2008) and the land grabbing activities and lack of permissions surrounding it. I wanted to highlight another such project called Girivan, developed by Sujata Farms Pvt Ltd.
The company is developing the private hill station, located 40 kilometres from Pune in an agricultural zone, without any permission or plan from the Collector's office. The firm has erected an illegal gate, preventing local farmers from entering their own land. When the farmers enquired, they came to know that Girivan has sold off most of the land. A farmer got his land measured by the Land Records Office only to find that someone had built a bungalow on it. Now the farmer is forced to take loans to fight a legal battle to get back his land. There is no support from any government agency. The developers have already laid roads through the agricultural zone and put up signboards.
In some cases, Girivan has dragged farmers to court, indirectly forcing them to sell their lands to it. The farmers have been fighting for the past one year.
sujit godbole
sujgod@eth.net
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