Encroachments on Gurdaspur cemeteries, Christians livid

Gurdaspur : Christians are up in arms against the district administration for not removing encroachments on pathways leading to burial grounds. Political families have allegedly encroached on cemeteries.
The encroachments on nearly a dozen burial grounds in the district mean that members of the community take their dead after taking long detours, many of which extend up to 2 km. In some cases, they cross waterlogged fields to reach the ground.
The worst affected villages are Ransike Mira and Talwandi Rama (Dera Baba Nanak), Kashtiwal (Fatehgarh Churian) and Dayalgarh (Gurdaspur).
Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa had, on October 26 last year, claimed that an Akali sarpanch had encroached on the entrance to the Ransike Mira burial ground. “The sarpanch ploughed a part of the land, accruing financial benefits from the land where last rites of the dead are supposed to be performed,” he said.
Randhawa had highlighted the matter on the day Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had announced a grant of Rs 100 crore for the maintenance of burial grounds.
Senior Christian leader Kanwal Bakshi, who has been at the forefront of the struggle to remove encroachments, blamed “powerful Jat Sikh lobby working against the interests of suppressed Christians”. He cited the example of Talwandi Rama Lambardar Ajit Singh who, he claimed, had been cultivating 15 marlas of burial land for several years. A livid Bakshi said, “Officials should immediately act, otherwise a time will come when Christians will have no place to bury the deceased.”