23 Vantangia villages to witness panchayat polls for the first time

Gorakhpur: The residents of 23 Vantangia villages — five in Gorakhpur and 18 in Maharajganj — would vote in panchayat elections for the first time ever. The 23 Vantangia villages were declared revenue villages by the Yogi Adityanath government on January 1, 2018.
CM Yogi has been celebrating Diwali with Vantangias in Gorakhpur for more than two decades.
Maharajganj’s Vantangia people came into limelight last year on December 25, when PM Narendra Modi had virtual interaction with Ram Gulab, director of an FPO ‘Maharajganj Vegetable Producing Company’ for setting an example of contract farming. The farmers of Vantangia villages in Maharajganj had signed an MoU with an Ahmedabad-based company for the purchase of golden sweet potato.
“Around 99 years before Independence, the British Government started using people for cleaning forests, these people were called Tangia farmers. Tangia farmers were allowed to do farming on nine foot land between the rows of forest trees. They were not allowed to grow crops of their choice as it was decided by forest authorities so that the crop doesn’t harm the trees around and doesn’t degrade the fertility of soil. The farmers didn’t have any ownership right on the land and they had right only on the crop. Vantangias were totally dependent on forest for their livelihood. Due to negligence of previous governments, the Vantangias remained deprived of basic amenities and even 70 years after Independence,” said Sandeep Rai, a research scholar of DDU Gorakhpur University.