Lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha's administration on Tuesday demolished dozens of homes of members of the Gujjar and Bakerwal communities on the outskirts of Jammu as part of an anti-encroachment drive, triggering outrage and prompting forest minister Javed Rana to allege barbarity and selective targeting of tribal Muslims.
The forest department’s involvement in the eviction drive enraged Rana, who vowed action against the officials concerned.
The Sinha-led administration is already facing allegations of disproportionately targeting Kashmiris in its anti-drug campaign, leading to the demolition of dozens of properties of alleged drug peddlers in the Valley.
Tuesday’s drive took place at Sidhra in Jammu amid a large presence of police personnel. The victims were members of the region’s minority community.
Officials said around 20-30 structures were demolished to retrieve nearly 60 kanals of prime forest land.
The victims resisted, but could not save their homes from being flattened during the nearly four-hour operation.
Rana said people had been residing in the area for decades and claimed it was government and not forest land.
The affected families staged protests and alleged that the drive was carried out without any prior notice.
According to official data, over 17 lakh kanals of government land have been encroached across Jammu and Kashmir, with the Jammu division accounting for over 14 lakh kanals.
“Deeply shocked & outraged by the clandestine, unilateral demolition of homes in Sidhra, Jammu, by the LG Administration. Decades of heritage of our innocent Gujjar-Bakarwal families have been reduced to rubble without taking the elected, popular Government or my Ministry into confidence,” Rana posted on X.
“This is not a mere regulatory drive; it is a targeted, cruel eviction explicitly aimed at terrorising and marginalising our nomadic tribal communities who have protected these lands for over half a century. We will not stand by as silent spectators to this selective harassment and high-handedness. I am immediately taking this up at the highest level with Chief Minister @OmarAbdullah sb to demand an immediate halt, an institutional inquiry against the responsible officers & officials, and full rehabilitation for the affected families. Our people deserve justice, not displacement!” he added.
Rana told reporters the drive was “barbaric” and promised that the victims would be compensated.
“The march of the might of the State with bulldozer as judge, jury and executioner,” Jammu-based journalist Zaffar Choudhary wrote on X, posting a video of a police contingent and bulldozers headed towards the locality.
Anantnag MP Mian Altaf Ahmad condemned the “demolition of several residential structures belonging to poor tribal people in Sidhra”. He said the “high-handedness” of the administration and forest department was “unacceptable”.
Both Rana and Ahmad are Gujjar leaders.