Updated: December 2, 2020 7:21:51 am
A square in Srinagar. (Photo / File Express)
The Jammu and Kashmir administration has recently released a series of lists of alleged beneficiaries of the Roshni Act of 2001, now eliminated, which granted property rights to unauthorized occupants of state lands by paying a premium. Among those named are political leaders and bureaucrats. The transfers are being investigated by the CBI.
Following a recent order from the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, the administration annulled the law (previously it was prospectively repealed) and decided to take back the lands transferred under the Roshni plan. Right-wing groups in Jammu have described the plan as aimed at changing the demographics of the Jammu region, while mainstream political parties have accused the government of being selective against Muslims.
What was the Roshni Law?
Formally the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Acquisition of Property from Occupants) Act, 2001, was passed by the then government of the National Conference headed by Farooq Abdullah to grant ownership to people in possession of state lands, with a cut of 1990 and against a payment determined by the government. Since the objective was to generate resources for hydroelectric projects, it was called the Roshni (Light) Law.
In 2005, the PDP-Congress coalition government headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed amended the law to relax the cut-off year from 1990 to 2004. In a subsequent amendment, the government of Ghulam Nabi Azad set the premium at 25% of the market rate and the deadline in 2007. The government granted property rights to agricultural land to the occupying farmers, who only had to pay Rs 100 per kanal of land as a documentation fee.
How much was transferred and how much did the government earn?
At the time it passed the law, the government expected to transfer ownership of 20.46 lakh kanals (1.02 lakh hectares) of state land: 16.02 lakh kanals in the Jammu region and 4.44 lakh kanals in Kashmir . The government set a speculative target of 25 billion rupees.
However, the transfer of ownership was approved for only 6.04 lakh kanals: 5.71 lakh kanals in Jammu and 33,392 kanals in Kashmir. And only 3.48 lakh kanals of land were transferred. The government revised its target to Rs 317.55 crore, and it earned only Rs 76.46 crore – Rs 54.05 crore from Kashmir (target Rs 123.49 crore) and Rs 22.40 crore from Jammu region (target Rs 194.06 crore).
The ownership of 3 lakh kanals (17,500 hectares) has been transferred to the Jammu region compared to 33,000 kanals in Kashmir. In Kashmir, most of this land had been rented to commercial houses and for residential purposes, in some cases for nearly 100 years.
J&K Roshni Law: Why Has It Been Controversial?
In its 2014 report, the CAG called the scheme a Rs-25,000-crore scam. He pointed to irregularities and said that the arbitrary price reduction by a standing committee was done to benefit politicians and influential people.
Shortly after the government approved the Law, the then State Surveillance Organization filed an FIR against some people who did not meet the criteria but managed to cede ownership of the land under the scheme. One prominent case came to be known as the Gulmarg land scam, in which several high-level bureaucrats are accused of illegally transferring land from the Gulmarg Development Authority to private entities. One of the main defendants in this case, Baseer Ahmad Khan, an IAS officer, was appointed an advisor to the deputy governor of J&K in March this year. No action was taken against top bureaucrats in similar cases in the Jammu region. A petition was also filed in the Superior Court to verify the violations of the Law on the basis of the 17 FIRs.
When was the Roshni Law removed?
In October 2018, then-Governor Satya Pal Malik prospectively repealed the Roshni Act. “All pending proceedings under the Law will be immediately canceled … any action taken under the provisions of the repealed Law will not be invalid,” said his order.
In September 2019, Malik ordered an investigation by the state’s Anti-Corruption Office into all dealings under the Roshni Scheme. Following this, another petition was filed in the Superior Court requesting the transfer of the investigation to the CBI. 📣 Express Explained is now on Telegram
What did the court say?
In October this year, the High Court declared the Roshni Law “illegal, unconstitutional and unsustainable” and ab initio annulled the allocations provided for in the law. He ordered a CBI investigation into the transfer of ownership, sought action against the bureaucrats involved, and asked the government to make public the names of prominent people who were assigned land. In the lists of beneficiaries that have been made public so far, the names of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen were listed with the names of the parents, residence, work profile and affiliation. For others, only names and parents’ names were specified.
Also in Explained | Muslim-Hindu demographics of Jammu and Kashmir: what the census data shows
Why did the Jammu groups campaign against the Roshni Law?
Some right-wing groups in Jammu have argued that the Roshni Act was aimed at changing the demographics of the Hindu-majority Jammu district. “The observation of the court has shown that there was a demographic change. Thirty thousand cases of land transfers were reported in the order of the state government, of which more than 25,000 cases were from Jammu and only 4,500 from Kashmir, ”said petitioner and lawyer Ankur Sharma, who heads the group Ik Jutt Jammu.
Government figures show that the property rights of 44,912 kanals have been transferred in the Jammu district, which is more than the transferred land in the entire Kashmir valley.
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