Sikkim-Bengal border bridge hits forest land hurdle

Nisha Chettri, SNS, Rangpo: The construction of an 826-meter-long bridge on the Sikkim-Bengal border here has hit the forest land rights hurdle, similar to the one hit by the all-important Sevoke-Rangpo railway project.

Just like the stalled Sikkim s first railway project, around 200 metres of the bridge will fall on the Bengal part in Rangpo, while building that bridge would mean evicting 56 families dwelling in the forest area on the Bengal part here.

The Block administration and the police today called a 'coordination meeting' here to talk about the benefits of national projects like the bridge.

Block Development Officer of Algarah Block-2. moreover, said that paying compensation to the evicted families to make way for the bridge would be a problem as they do not have proper land documents.

A total of 354 houses of Rangpo had submitted the claim-form, but they are not ready to accept the title deed for reasons unknown," BDO Subarno Majumdar said.

"The new project will affect 56 houses here, and we were here to discuss how compensation will be given and how and where the families would be rehabilitated. For all these, land papers are very important, and there will be problems with the compensation if the gram sabha does not clear these issues. We can proceed with our task of providing them with the title deed, followed later by the land rights documents," he added.

Sources said that the meeting was conducted as per instructions from the Kalimpong District Magistrate "to convince the forest dwellers to provide the no-objection certificate for the project."

The project is being undertaken by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and is worth Rs 55 crore approximately. The National Highway Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is handling the project which started hi February 2017 and is scheduled to be completed in February 2020. The project on Sikkim side is completed,while the same in the Bengal side is taking time because of the forest rights issues.

"Most of the forest dwellers are not in the mood to give the no-objection certificate as their demand for implementing the Forest Rights

Act-2006 in 168 villages is still pending,' sources said. The engineer handling the bridge project, S B Singh,later said that the issue of property, whether belonging to the government or privately owned, should be resolved soon. The bridge will shorten the distance from Rangpo to Gangtok by around 4 km," he said.

Forest dwellers in Rangpo say that the problem is not with the 58 families alone, but families living in the entire stretch of the forest "All of them could face such situations or consequences at one point of time or the other. We are firm on our stand of not budging  an inch until the Forest Rights Act is implemented by the government," a forest dweller said.

Ganesh Khati, the General Secretary of the Hill Forest Village Organization, said they do not want the rights of the forest dwellers to be violated. "The claim-form is being distributed only when national projects came in the scene, while they had to do this as soon as the Act was okayed in 2006. They should have given the forms by 2006," he said.

According to him, the people will, however, convene a gram sabha and decide on what to do regarding the project.