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Akalis oppose inclusion of UP district in Uttaranchal

Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, who had an hour-long meeting with Prime Minister A B Vajpayee this afternoon, has categorically stated that there was no change in his party's stand that Udham Singh Nagar should be excluded from the proposed hill state of Uttaranchal.

Talking to the media after the meeting, which he described as positive, Badal said their stand for exclusion of the plains area from the hill state was genuine on two counts. Udham Singh Nagar is a plains area and secondly, more than 90 per cent of the people wanted it to remain with Uttar Pradesh, he said.

During his meeting with the prime minister, he had explained the constitutional position that would not bar the exclusion of Udham Singh Nagar from Uttaranchal state as claimed by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madanlal Khurana. In every reorganisation of states, the parliamentary and assembly constituencies get re-demarcated and bifurcated and there was nothing new in their demand.

Khurana had yesterday virtually ruled out the possibility of excluding the plain areas from the proposed hill state since it was part of the Nainital parliamentary constituency which is in the hill state.

Badal said they had made it clear to the prime minister that raising of the demand should not misconstrued that the Akali Dal was espousing the cause of Sikhs alone. In fact, the area had a mixed population.

A delegation from Udham Singh Nagar district, invited to the meeting to present their case, claimed that 295 out of 327 gram sabhas of the area had adopted resolutions supporting the demand for keeping the plains area out of the proposed hill state. Besides this, the culture, language and way of living of the Udham Singh Nagar area had nothing in common with the hill people, the delegation said.

According to sources, the Akalis raised objection to Khurana's statement rejecting their demand. The statement was not only detrimental to the coalition government but also harmed them politically in Punjab and outside, the Akalis said.

Sources said Khurana explained to the Akalis that he did not mean to ''provoke'' them and had not rejected their demand as such. He had explained the constitutional aspects of the demand which were not properly projected in the press.

The Akalis were asked in the meeting whether they would agree to mellow down their demand for exclusion of the Udham Singh Nagar area from the proposed hill state if the Land Ceiling Act was kept in abeyance. The area is inhibited by Sikh landlords who own a sizeable chunk of cultivable land there. But Akali leaders insisted on the exclusion of the area from the proposed hill state, sources said.

The Akalis were represented by Union Food Minister S S Barnala, Minister of State for Industry Sukhbir Singh Badal, G S Tohra, Prem Singh Chandumajra, Amrik Singh Aliwal, Balwinder Singh Bhundar, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Chaitin Singh, Zora Singh Mann and Satwinder Kaur Dhaliwal (all MPs). Khurana was also present at the meeting.

BJP MP from Punjab Kamal Chaudhary and independent MP and Punjab Bahujan Samaj Morcha leader Satnam Kaith also attended the meeting as part of Badal's delegation from Punjab, besides two BJP state ministers Balramjee Das Tandon and Madan Mohan Mittal.

The BJP government's insistence that the boundaries of the proposed Uttarakhand hill state could not be altered appears to have caught the Akali Dal, which is spearheading the demand for exclusion of Udham Singh Nagar district from the new state, in a bind.

Akali sources said the party is now planning to get in touch with BJP's allies, including the Samata Party and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Trinamul Congress, to put pressure on the BJP leadership to concede their demand. This move is being resorted to since accepting the BJP's position would mean a serious setback to the party in political terms.

The Akali Dal leaders, who had two rounds of meetings with Vajpayee and Home Minister L K Advani, were however assured that the landholdings in the Udham Singh Nagar area would be protected from any possible ceiling laws which the new state might enact in future.

Sources said the bait offered by the BJP leadership did not cut ice with them since the land reforms come directly under the state purview and the Centre had no role in such matters. The assurance, they said, would remain only on paper, the Dal leaders feel.

UNI

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