AFTER holding public hearings on various issues concerning the people of the Santal Pargana division of Jharkhand from December 19 to 22, the CPI(M) has resolved to hold a month-long campaign in the panchayats of the four districts – Godda, Sahebganj, Pakur and Deoghar – comprising the division, in January 2024.

The first public hearing was conducted at the mining project site of Rajmahal Opencast Coal Project, of Coal India's ECL company, in Godda district. Hundreds of farmers who had given their land for mining work gathered there. After talking to the tenants who were displaced from the Lohandia mining project site, it was understood that the hundreds of tenants whose land was taken for the open-cast coal mining project have neither been compensated nor rehabilitated nor given employment as promised to them.

Meanwhile, the ECL management, with the help of the local administration, has been forcibly acquiring the lands of the farmers and demolishing their houses with bulldozers to expand their project, the farmers said at the public hearing.

Cases were registered against the farmers who tried to protest, and no efforts were made to prevent pollution from coal mining.

Hundreds of farmers, women and youth present at the public hearing, in detail, explained the horrific situation there and took the CPI(M) team to their ruined residences near the project site and told them that the management had already stopped the electricity and drinking water supply of the residential colony.

After recording all the main problems in the public hearing, it was decided that a list of those farmers whose land compensation, rehabilitation and employment matters are pending will be prepared within the next 15 days and a demonstration will be held at the block office in the month of January.

Pressure will be put on local administration to hold talks with the ECL management and the farmers. If the issues are not resolved, the struggle against ECL management will be further intensified, in which the transportation of coal mined by the company will be stopped. This fact also came out prominently in the public hearing that most of the mining work in ECL is done by a private outsourcing company of Birla, EMIL.

In the next phase of the public hearing, the Party team went to Lalbathani and Piyarpur, two big panchayats situated on the banks of the Ganga River in Sahebganj district. More than 4,000 people participated in the public hearing organised at Piyarpur school. Here, it came to light that there is an issue of unsurveyed land in the Diara area situated on the banks of the Ganga river in this district.

People living in this area are apprehensive about their future as, over the last two or three years, the farmers here have not been given revenue receipts of their lands, and the agenda of RSS-BJP is to declare the Bengali-speaking minorities living in this area for the last 100 years as infiltrators. This campaign of the RSS-BJP has the open patronage of the home minister of the country and also the governor. The recent statements given by these people confirm this.

The people who have been living here for generations will no longer have the legal right to own land, which will give an opportunity to the forces that have been branding the people living here for more than 100 years as foreign infiltrators. Therefore, the issue of unsurveyed land is a major problem for the people living here and farming on that land. Due to the non-receipt of land revenue receipt, the tenants living here are not getting any kind of certificate, including residence, income and caste, due to which the students and youth are facing the brunt because they are not able to apply for jobs. All the people present here said that the MPs and MLAs of this area who are from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha are limited to only giving assurances on this issue.

The public hearing continued till 10 pm, and it was decided that a strong movement should be launched by running a massive campaign on this burning question. Brinda Karat, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member who was present in the public hearings,  discussed this issue with the district's deputy commissioner the next day, but he also kept blaming the survey department. In the Sahebganj district, the Khasmahal land issue in urban areas came up in public hearings. Due to the non-renewal of Khasmahal land, people in Sahebganj urban areas are facing huge problems.

The next round of public hearings took place in the Pakur district, where a large number of women labourers working in the beedi industry, stone industry workers and students studying in local colleges were present. Women workers in the beedi industry said that they do not get minimum wages and for making one thousand beedis, they get only Rs 173, but the people of the beedi company remove 300 to 400 beedis out of those 1000 beedis and pay only Rs 70-80 and keep the remaining beedis. In this way, they are mercilessly exploited.

When the Beedi Union took the matter to the labour department, the workers were not given work. The students present in the public hearing pointed out the problems of fee hikes, shortage of teachers and severe lack of infrastructure in colleges. This district was once the centre of the stone industry. The stone chips here are considered to be of very high quality and are in demand in big construction projects across the country. About 80,000 workers used to earn their livelihood from this industry, but now the stone quarries and small crushers of this area have been closed, and the workers here have migrated in search of work in other states.

Now the crushers running here are completely in automation mode and are being operated by big owners from outside. It came to light in the public hearing that both the central and state governments are responsible for this situation. It is not possible to solve this problem without identifying the dire situation of unemployment and planning an action plan for a continuous movement.

During the public hearing, information about the problems of farmers and the horrific situation of food insecurity was also received.

Another major problem that came to light in the public hearing was the state government not issuing caste certificates to the Shershahwadi Muslim community. A large population of them lives here.

Till 2012, Shershahwadi Muslims used to get caste certificates regularly. It stopped being available after 2012. There was a continuous movement for this by the CPI(M), and then the district administration issued some caste certificates till the year 2017, but after that, due to the absence of mention of Shershahwadi in the Khatian (record of right), it stopped issuing caste certificates.

Meanwhile, caste certificates are being issued to the people of the Shershahwadi Muslim community residing in dozens of districts of Bihar and West Bengal. It has been banned only in Jharkhand. Due to the non-availability of this certificate, thousands of educated youth in this area are being deprived of appearing in the medical, engineering, central services, railway and Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examinations; the youth present in the public hearing said.

The Congress representatives elected from this area are cabinet ministers of the state government, but instead of solving the issue, they have been giving vague assurances.

The next stop of the public hearing was the Punasi Dam, which has been built for the last four decades in the Deoghar district. To date, the farmers there have not received compensation for their land, while many farmers who gave the land have died.

Nearly 10,000 people participated in this public hearing, which lasted for four consecutive days in four districts of Santal Pargana and covered a distance of 800 kilometres.

The fact also came to light that the MPs and MLAs of this area were limiting to only giving assurances on these burning issues. They have not taken any initiative towards its solution, due to which there is huge anger among the people here.

During the public hearing, the CPI(M) team listened carefully to the common people facing problems and recorded their views.

Now, the respective district committees of the Party will hold their meetings within the next 15 days and make a concrete plan to run a continuous campaign on these issues from the month of January and start a militant movement in these districts so that the people of this area can get some relief.

In this four-day public hearing campaign, the Party's Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat, state secretary Prakash Viplav, and state secretariat members Mohd Iqbal, Shibani Pal, state committee member Ashok Sah, district secretaries of four districts Raghuveer Mandal, Asghar Alam, Gopin Soren, Naval Kishore Singh; and Shyam Sundar Poddar, Mohd Ishtiaq and Pratik Mishra from the Party state centre were present. Various major newspapers, Jharkhand's news channels, and Santal Pargana web portals provided good coverage of this public hearing.