UTTARAKHAND SANGHARSH SAMITI Vs. STATE OF U P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) RAVI S. Dhavan, J. This writ petition of Uttarakhand Sangharsh Samiti came to court on 7th October, 1994 within five days of the incidents to which the court's attention was drawn, which occurred in the areas of the hills of Uttar Pradesh and concerned the peoples of Kumaon and Garhwal.

(2.) ON the first three days of October, 1994, while a representative section of the peoples of the hills of Kumaon and Garhwal were as activists exerting their civil rights they were met with State resistance. The resistence came from the ad ministration and was executed through the police and para- military forces. There was firing on the crowds and at Mussoorie in Garhwal and Khatima in Kumaon and a little beyond the foot hills of these regions at Muzaffarnagar, there were deaths by firing. From Muzaffarnagar came reports of sexual assaults by police and the Provincial Armed Constabulary. The reports from the media carried new nation wide, of those killed in firing and of women being raped and molested and yet others were shorn of their jewellery and personal effects. Why did all this happen?

(3.) A long term claim of the peoples of Kumaon and Garhwal dating back to 1930, ultimately crystalised into a demand for a separate province within the na tion. The State Government of Uttar Pradesh had this claim examined over the last sixty years through various official agencies, the last of them being a Committee headed and chaired by a Hpn'ble Cabinet Minister, Mr. Ramashanker Kaushik. The Kaushik Committee submitted its report. It was recommended that Kumaon and Garhwal should see statehood and be known as the State of Uttaranchal. The two Houses of the State Legislature accepted the report of the Ramashanker Kaushik Committee.