Bihar: Woman Sarpanch Settles a 20-year-old Land Dispute in 6 Days

A woman sarpanch in south central Bihar debunked all myths revolving around women's decisiveness by settling a 20-year-old land dispute in less than a week.

Fifty-year-old Pushpanjali Singh, is the sarpanch of  Wari Panchayat under Dobhi Police Station area of Gaya district. Besides solving the case quickly, she dealt fairly with all the parties leaving them satisfied at the end.

She had taken over as head of the Panchayat in June 2016. There are around 18 villages and 15 wards under her jurisdiction. Since then, she has already settled 52 civil and 30 criminal cases.

Pushpanjali Singh told HT that she got to know about the 20-year-old land dispute when 79-year-old Ramashish Singh, a resident of the Pidasin village under Dobhi police station area, approached her. The land dispute involved his cousins Sidhi Singh and Radhey Shyam Singh.

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“While Sidhi and Radhey Shyam eked out their livelihood by farming, Ramashish’s job with a private firm kept him away from the village for a long time. When Ramashish returned to Pidasin post his retirement in 1997, his cousins denied him 5.89 acres of ancestral land he had inherited. When Radhey Shyam died in 1999, his widow Chandrawati Devi, who was issueless, gifted her share of the land to Sunaina Singh, wife one of Sidhi’s grandsons,” Pushpanjali Singh told HT.

“Ramashish approached many villagers for help and also sought police intervention. With no solution in sight, he filed a partition suit in the Civil Court in 2006. Two criminal cases were also lodged with Dobhi Police station by Ramashish and Sunaina. While the matter lingered, Ramashish’s eldest brother Sidhi passed away in February 2017,” the sarpanch added.

The sarpanch called the three disputing parties — Ramashish, Swadesh, son of Sidhi and Suniana’s husband Ranjay—to the village court on June 7. “Half the battle was won when the rival parties, who had, by now, spent much of their wealth fighting legal battles, agreed to withdraw cases against each other,” she said.