With Jerome out, JD(S) land sharks feast over Govt. land

Land sharks feasting over govt land in Bangalore

The government would not only initiate steps to prevent land grabbing, but would also take serious action against land sharks, says M P Prakash.
Deccan Herald

It is shocking. About 1,78,708 acres of government land in and around Bangalore city have been encroached upon by land sharks. This is in addition to the encroachment of 4,500 acres of government land identified by an official task force recently.

Disclosing this while replying to a call attention notice tabled by Mr Roshan Baig (Cong) in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, Revenue Minister M P Prakash noted that the above details on land grabbing had been submitted to the government by the Divisional Commissioner of Bangalore in 2001. This included 24,042 incidents of unauthorised constructions on 1,77,435 acres of land and 208 incidents of grabbing 1,273 acres of prime land valued at Rs 49.21 crore, by forging documents. He noted that only nominal rates had been considered while estimating the value of the land. In addition to this, 14,366 acres of farm land (private) around Bangalore was being illegally used for non-farming purposes without obtaining clearance for land conversion, the minister said.


‘Serious action’
Expressing concern over the increasing cases of land grabbing in and around Bangalore, Mr Prakash declared that the government would not only initiate steps to prevent land grabbing, but would also take serious action against land sharks besides recovering the encroached land.

Refusing to divulge further details in this regard, he said the government did not want to give any clues to the land sharks about its plans.

Though the divisional commissioner had recommended constituting a separate task force to identify land grabbing in 2001, the recommendation had not been considered as there was already the metropolitan task force for the purpose, he explained. The government had recently decided to strengthen the task force by providing four surveyors and four inspectors from the Revenue department to the task force besides offering the assistance of the legal cell of the Revenue Department.

Committee
Apart from this, the government had also decided to constitute a state-level steering committee headed by the revenue secretary and a co-ordination committee headed by the Bangalore Urban district deputy commissioner to co-ordinate with the task force, Mr Prakash said.

He also told Mr Baig that the government was considering the suggestion of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda who was for strengthening the task force by appointing a senior IPS officer as its chief.