The Uttarakhand Congress has come out in support of the families served eviction notices by the Railway authorities in Haldwani town of Nainital district. On Monday the secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) Qazi Nizamuddin asked the Uttarakhand government to help these families on humanitarian grounds and take up their cause in the Supreme Court.  Interacting with the media persons at the headquarters of Uttarakhand Congress, Nizamuddin said that about 4,500 families have come under the threat of becoming homeless. He said that these families have been residing there for the last 70 years and their eviction is not justified. The Congress leader said that the said area has government schools, government health centre, places of worship and other government facilities and it is not justified to remove these families. He claimed that since the State government had auctioned the ‘enemy property’ in the area and given possession to people so prima facie it appears that the people residing there are not encroachers. Nizamuddin demanded that the State government should declare the area as slum areas so that they can be rehabilitated in case they are evicted. It is pertinent to mention here that the Uttarakhand High Court has asked the authorities to remove illegal encroachments from a 2.2 kilometre long stretch of land belonging to Indian railways in Haldwani. The residents of the area are protesting their eviction and the local MLA of Congress party Sumit Hridayesh has stood up in their support and has approached the Supreme Court. Nizamuddin said that he is confident that the SC would give its verdict in the favour of the affected families. The vice president, organisation, Mathura Dutt Joshi, state general secretary Yaqoob Siddiqui, Garima Dasauni and others were present on the occasion.