Hindus expelled from Pakistan and Bangladesh and now living in Uttar Pradesh, have been accommodated in the land that the Yogi Adityanath government freed from encroachers.

A state government spokesman said: “Hindus, who were living in Meerut for decades after facing expulsion from Pakistan and Bangladesh, could not afford to build their own houses or buy lands. We have given 63 such Bengali Hindu families two acres of land and 200 square yards for housing per family in Kanpur Dehat. These lands were freed from land grabbers.”

Each of the 63 families has also been given Rs 1.20 lakh under the ‘Mukhyamantri Awas Yojana’.

The Chief Minister ensured that the land freed from ‘encroachers’ was brought under a land bank and these pieces of land will be used for setting up schools, industries and other businesses in future.

“Many facilities of the Defence Industrial Corridor have also been built on these recovered lands,” the spokesman said.

The state government currently has 64,366 hectares of the recovered land and it is being allotted for the poor to build houses.

Yogi Adityanath had earlier said in the Legislative Council that the anti-land mafia task force had freed 67,000 acres of land belonging to the revenue department.

(The story has been published via a syndicated feed with a modified headline.)