Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, away from media attention, has been focussing on marginalised communities like Vantangiyas. Indeed he has been spending his Deepawali with them since 2007.
Vantangiyas is the community that should ideally get the credit for greening up eastern Uttar Pradesh however they still lead impoverished lives.
They had no access to education, subsidized food, and healthcare and despite living in dense forests and turning barren land into forests, they have no right over forest produce. They were even seen as encroachers of the land of the forest.
In 1985, when the police tried to evict them from UP forests, the Vantangiyas decided to fight for their rights. Two of them were killed when cops opened fire on the protesting community.
Vantangiya is found in the majority in the Gorakhpur district from where Yogi Adityanath comes from. Since the beginning of his political career in 1998, CM Yogi has been working for the Vantangiya community.
He played a vital role in bringing the Forest Rights Amendment Act in 2006. He even laid foundation stones for schemes worth Rs 1.32 crore in Gorakhpur.
Beyond that, the Yogi administration worked to provide the residents to get the land title, which not only gave them land rights but also made them eligible for various government schemes.
Later even the central government asked the state governments to convert all forest villages into revenue villages
After which CM Yogi declared the 38 Vantangiya-dominant villages as revenue villages and ensured that basic facilities such as housing, toilets, schools, proper drinking water, good roads, health centers, pension, etc reached them.
In 2017, CM Yogi Adityanath distributed land patta to 3,779 Vantangiya families. The villagers who didn’t have voting rights also got a chance to vote for the first time in the 2019 general election.
Primary schools, Junior high school, and Anganwadi centers were also established by Yogi Adityanath under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
