Nearly one lakh landless poor demonstrated at over 200 regional centres in Bihar on the issue of dwellings and land for farming, following the call given by All India Agricultural Labour Association (AIALA) and Shehri Gareeb Morcha (Urban Poor Front). Angrily raising slogans of ‘Give us land not announcements’, the protestors demanded that they be given homestead land, papers for land occupancy, and occupation of the land for which they have been issued papers. In the course of the demonstration, nearly 1 lakh applications were given across the state in which the question of allotting nearly tens of thousands of acres of land for which papers have been issued. Once again the Manjhi government is offering false assurance of homes and farming lands to the poor. While several announcements pertaining to land distribution are being made on papers, in actual the situation is the exact opposite where on an increasing rate the poor are being displaced even from whatever little land they do have for living and agriculture. In the survey report brought by CPI (ML) it had been revealed that nearly sixty percent of people in Bihar were landless. Had the JD (U) government implemented the land reform recommendations then nearly 21 lakh acres of land marked by the committee could have been recovered by the state government and distributed to the landless for accommodation and doing agriculture. Protesting against the false promises of the state government, thousands of people even demonstrated in the cities on the question of land reforms.
The various AIALA leaders leading the demonstrations declared that they will continue to expose the false assurances of the government and intensify the movement to force the government to implement its announcements.