Lack of implementation still making minorities suffer

The vested property return act has not been able to end decades of sufferings of the minorities due to corrupt field level officers and interest groups, rights activists said yesterday.

"After the 2013 amendment of the act, we thought that 80 percent of the sufferers would be relieved but in reality we don't see any prospect of the miseries ending in the near future," said Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Oikya Parishad.

He was addressing a press conference held under the banner the National Cell of Citizens for Implementation of the Vested Property Return Act, a platform of nine rights organisations including the Association for Land Reform and Development, Ain o Salish Kendra, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, and Nijera Kori.

After the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the then Pakistan government promulgated the enemy property ordinance and took possession of properties of any non-Muslim individual or families, who left Pakistan for India between 1965 and 1969, Kajal Debnath, a presidium member of the Parishad, had told The Daily Star earlier.

The state continued to take over properties of religious minorities as vested properties till April 2001 when the government passed the vested property return act to give vested properties back to their rightful owners by producing a list called "Ka", added another presidium member, Subrata Chowdhury.

At the conference, Rana Dasgupta said there are a large number of applicants for the properties awaiting hearings in some districts.

"We demand special tribunals in those districts for disposal of the cases of vested properties," he added.

He also demanded a government directive that would help people reclaim their properties, avoiding all bureaucratic tangles and corruption.