Ten houses in Kapoori Narayanpur village in Ballia district were razed to the ground on Monday giving rise to another storm in the political circles in Uttar Pradesh.
UP minister for revenue Ambica Choudhury belongs to Kapoori Narayanpur village and those whose houses were bulldozed claim that they were targeted because they had refused to vote for the minister in the recent elections.
Mr Choudhury had lost the recent elections from Phephna Assembly segment and is now being nominated to the Vidhan Parishad.
The minister, on Tuesday, clarified that he had nothing to do with the demolition of the houses and denied the charges being levelled against him.
He said that the houses had been illegally constructed on gram samaj land and were razed on the orders of the court. “If these charges are baseless then will Mr Choudhury explain why the houses of his relatives, built on the same land, were spared in the demolition drive? Besides these houses had been in existence since the past 40 years,” said Upendra Tiwari, the BJP MLA who won the seat defeating Mr Choudhury.
The local villagers claim that the district authorities did not serve them any notice regarding the houses. “Suddenly in the afternoon, we saw some officials measuring the land and within minutes, the bulldozers arrived. People were asked to move out of their houses and were not even given time to remove their belongings. The houses were razed to the ground within an hour,” said one of residents whose daughter is to be married in the next fortnight. “I have lost all that I had purchased for her,” he wailed on the telephone, requesting anonymity.
The BJP MLA further said that when he asked the local revenue official Ashutosh Dubey to show him the court orders, the latter declined, which proves that the action was politically motivated.
A district official, meanwhile, said that the court had ordered the removal of encroachments thrice and the villagers had been warned in advanced. However, he refused to say whether the administration had served notice to the occupants before razing their houses to the ground.