AL assures Santals of settling land ownership in meeting with PM

Top Awami League leaders have assured the leaders of Santal community of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha of settling the ownership of the disputed land of Rangpur Sugar Mill in a meeting with the prime minister once she returns home.

Leaders of Santal community of the Gobindaganj in Gaibandha met the top leaders of ruling Awami League on Tuesday night at the party president’s office in Dhanmondi and demanded stopping police repressions on them and taking steps so that police register the cases filed by the affected people in November 6 attacks.

The Awami League leaders including its general secretary Obaidul Quader assured them of meeting their demand and instantly instructed Gaibandha police to record cases filed by them, one of participants in the meeting told New Age.

The leaders also agreed that relief activities in Gobindaganj villages would be directly carried out by Gaibandha district administration.

Oikya NAP president Pankaj Bhattachrya, who was present at the meeting , told New Age, that some important decisions were taken in the meeting to stop police repressions on the Santal people at Gobindaganj.

Pankaj said the Santal leaders said the local administrations and some members of the ruling party were responsible for the attacks on the Santal people to evict them from their lands in the sugar mill area.

They also demanded withdrawal of the cases field by the police against the Santals and stopping repressions on them.

The local leaders refused to to take relief from the upazila administration whom they deem responsible for the attacks, Pankaj said.

Chaired by the Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader, the meeting was attended among others by presidium member Matia Chowdhury, joint general secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif, central leaders Sujit Roy Nandi, AKM Enamul Haque Shamim, Jatiya Adivasi Forum president Rabindranath Soren, Santal leader Philimin Banke, and two locals Shajahan Ali Prodhan and Shawpan Miah.

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