Govt. fails to take action against land sharks

More than 1.20 lakh kanal Govt land under illegal encroachment in Jammu

Tahir Mushtaq

JAMMU, Sept 11: At least 1.20 lakh kanals land is under the illegal occupation of encroachers who have illegally occupied at very prime locations in Jammu. The value of encroached land has been estimated in hundreds of crores of rupees.

“Though so called special drives are launched by the state, but they have no effect as many of the people have strong political backing. The land grabbers had also shown strong resistance during operation”, said a senior officer of Revenue department.

As per the sources nearly 280 kanals of the land around Golf Course, near Sidhra besides downhill the Mahamaya Temple has been illegally grabbed and majority of the people belonging  from Kashmir valley and Kishtwar..

“This one lakh kanals of land is now being treated as encroached, sources said, adding in addition to this there could be at least nearly 20,000 kanals of land, which has been encroached upon in Jammu district only”, sources said.

Sources claimed that there was clear evidence of encroachment of one lakh kanals Government land in Jammu district alone. While 20,000 kanals land was expected to have been grabbed, which is in the process of being identified to get it retrieved.

Administration has received payment for regularization of land only for 40,000 kanals while the persons, mostly influential, didn’t deposit the money to get their land regularized despite having duly applied for it.

Some bigwigs have also encroached upon the Government land worth crores. Despite applying for regularization of land under the Roshni Act, they didn’t deposit the money.

After the implementation of Roshni Act, the administration had received applications for regularization of 1.40 lakh kanals of commercial, residential, agriculture and other form of land in Jammu district. They had to deposit the amount fixed for regularization of land by the Government within a period of two years, which expired in 2009.

This land is in addition to nearly 5000 kanals of land, which has been retrieved by the Revenue Department in Jammu, Samba and Udhampur districts after politician-officials-mafia nexus.