05, Feb 2016

Lakshmipura-Bhandu is a small village of Visnagar taluka in Mehsana, home district of CM Anandiben Patel.
Written by Parimal A Dabhi | Mehsana | Updated: February 5, 2016 7:33 am
For over two years, a Dalit family at Lakshmipura-Bhandu village in Mehsana district has been struggling to build a toilet for itself but can’t do so, owing to the alleged opposition to it by some local upper-caste people. With no toilet, the family is forced to defecate in the open, sometimes as far as half-a- kilometre away from where they live.
Lakshmipura-Bhandu is a small village of Visnagar taluka in Mehsana, home district of CM Anandiben Patel. With total population of around 500 people, the village is dominated by financially and politically influential Chaudhary community. The village has only one Dalit family — of Bhikhabhai Senma, 65, a landless farmer.
Senma’s house is at the entrance of the village and his family has 13 members. “We want to construct a toilet outside our house. However, some locals have not been allowing us to do it by raising an issue of encroachment on village gauchar (pasture land),” Senma said.
According to Senma, the alleged encroachment of gauchar land is only a pretext under which some locals, led by a school teacher named Vijay Chaudhary whose house is behind Senma’s, are trying to prevent him.