Squad coming, land grabbers better watch out

Squad coming, land grabbers better watch out
The Times of India

Bangalore: Land sharks beware! A special empowered squad will be constituted shortly - it will work directly under CM H D Kumaraswamy.

To be headed by a senior ranking IPS officer, the squad will have police officials who will take up investigations into the land scams, encroachment of revenue and government lands, irregularities in the denotification of lands and also probe the private complaints of cheating cases related to property transactions.

Sources in the chief minister’s secretariat told The Times of India that the squad’s first assignment would be to deal with the land scams which have the alleged involvement of politicians. “The CM is keen on cracking the whip on the land mafia. He wants cases linked with politicians to be probed initially. As of now, there is no exclusive squad to check the encroachments of government lands; the work is carried out by the deputy commissioner,’’ officials explained.

The revenue department has identified more than 7,000 acres of government and revenue lands that have been encroached upon in and around Bangalore. While an estimated 3,000 acres have been encroached upon in Bangalore urban district, nearly 4,000 acres have gone into the hands of land grabbers in rural area. These lands are valued at Rs 50,000 to Rs 4 crore per acre.

According to revenue department sources, the encroachments have been carried out mainly with the connivance of the government employees through forged documents. Criminal cases have been registered against 71 revenue department employees who had joined hands with the land grabbers.

“Politicians are involved in these cases one way or the other. Be it the MLAs, corporators, councillors or cronies of the politicians, encroachment cases have their hand. The squad will look into such cases,’’ sources added.

The squad will go into the arbitrary denotification of lands done to favour any person in power. This happens when lands are acquired in a big way for mega projects. For instance: a major chunk of 300 acres situated in the heart of Arkavathy Layout was denotified by the BDA authorities as the lands belong to a senior politician who could pull strings at the government level. Though the lands were notified initially, they were denotified during the final notification and were exempted from acquisition.

The special squad will be empowered to probe encroachment cases which have not been cracked due to political pressure. For example: the BDA recently recovered its property of 5.3 acres, worth Rs 75 crore, near Iskcon encroached upon by a powerful politician. The property, a part of Mahalakshmi Layout, was encroached upon way back in 1984 and the case was not taken up due to political pressure. Only recently, the BDA took a stern stand and recovered its land. The authorities still have to recover another 5.7 acres of the remaining plot which has a factory on it.

“The CM wants to bring in clean officials. Somebody who has handled high-profile cases like the STAMPIT will head it,’’ sources added.