- (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? Why should a civil rights movement to agitate in support of a demand that has been formally agreed to lead to violence? Kumaon and Garhwal are the regions of hills and mountains of the north whether of the nation or the State of Uttar Pradesh. The terrain is part of one continuous chain of the young fold mountains which stretch from Gilgit in the North to the ranges of Jammu and Kashmir. Himachal Pradesh, Garhwal and Kumaon in U. P. , Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, North Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya and thereafter the mountains ranges intertwining themselves in the ranges of Burma, now Kanmar. Except the areas of Kumaon and Garhwal, all other areas the geographic map shows are States.
(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. The State Government accepted as a measure of policy, endorsed in resolu tions of the two houses of the Legislature, cutting across all political party lines, that the areas of Kumaon and Garhwal have an identity and the peoples of these areas need to be identified as a State. The State of Uttar Pradesh has nad it deter mined that the peoples of Kumaon and Garhwal, are ethnically, socially, economi cally, and culturally different and live and work in entirely different circumstances. The policy of the State of Uttar Pradesh has received approval and mandate from its Legislature. This policy has even gone this far that the State of Uttar Pradesh had it declared and moved the federal Government, as far as it is concerned under Part II of the Constitution of India, to recommend and seek statehood for the regions of Kumaon and Garhwal, as a State known as Uttaranchal. More details on this aspect of the State of Uttar Pradesh, at its initiative conceeding statehood to the regions and the peoples of Kumaon and Garhwal are in the judgment of this Court in re the matter of Manvendra Shah, Member of Parliament v. State of Uttar Pradesh, Writ Petition No. 29843 of 1994 decided on 31 May, 1995 [since reported in 1995 (2) LBESR 147 (All)];