Updated: November 25, 2020 12:14:47 pm
J&K ex CM Farooq Abdullah (File photo)
The J&K administration claimed Tuesday that the leaders of the National Conference (NC) and former Chief Ministers Farooq and Omar Abdullah are among the state land invaders, saying their Jammu residence was built on illegally occupied land.
The administration also included Farooq Abdullah’s sister, Suraiya Matto, North Carolina offices in Jammu and Srinagar, and a Trust once owned by Congress on its new list of illegal beneficiaries of the Roshni Act.
According to investigations carried out by the UT administration, in 1998, the Abdullahs allegedly bought three kanals from different landowners in Sunjwan village in Bahu tehsil of Jammu to build their residence. However, instead of taking possession of the three private land kanals, they allegedly invaded more than seven kanals from a nearby primary state and forest land.
“The market value of the invaded land is around Rs. Rs 10 million per predominant land valuation, ”said a J&K official.
Their names are part of a list of invaded lands “other than Roshni”, where the land is “physically invaded but not shown in income records”. The list of “usurpers” also has the names of businessman Mushtaq Chaya and Ashfaq Mir, who has been identified as the son of J&K High Court judge, Judge (retd) Ali Mohammed Mir.
Denying the allegations, the National Conference said Tuesday: “The news attributed to the sources that Dr. Farooq Abdullah is a beneficiary of the Roshni Law is completely false and is spread with malicious intent. Dr Farooq Abdullah has not embraced Roshni’s plan for either his Srinagar or Jammu residency and anyone who says otherwise is lying. “
On the list of alleged illegal beneficiaries of the Roshni Act are the twin offices of the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir. According to the list, Sher-e-Kashmir Bhawan from the National Conference in Jammu had 3 kanal and 16 marla of land, which was regularized under the law. Similarly, in Srinagar, the group obtained 3 kanal and 16 marla of land on behalf of the Nawai-Subah Trust.
The names are part of a list of nearly 2,000 beneficiaries of J & K’s 2001 Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants Act, commonly known as the Roshni Act, and other state and forest land invaders, published by the administration. of UT. According to the law, allegedly undue concessions were granted for the regularization of land conversion at rates much lower than those stipulated, and the cut-off year continued to change.
So far, the administration has published 167 names in Kashmir and 1,781 names in Jammu. Sources said more lists could be released in due course to comply with the J&K Superior Court’s instructions, which called the Act “unconstitutional” in October this year, ordering a CBI investigation and calling on the UT administration to publish the names of all the invaders.
Also among the alleged illegal beneficiaries of the law is Farooq Abdullah’s sister, Suraiya Mattoo. For the regularization of 3 kanals and 12 marla of land, Mattoo was supposed to pay Rs 1 crore to the state. The same has yet to be paid, according to the administration.
Also on the list of beneficiaries is the Khidmat Trust at Jhelum Bund in Srinagar. The Trust, which also manages the Khidmet Press and a commercial building, received seven kanals and 15 marlas of land under the Roshni Act in Srinagar.
The Khidmat Trust was established in September 1992 by Congress with the former head of the state party Ghulam Rasool Kar as its first trustee. The trustees included Congressional leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, ML Fotedar, and Mangat Ram Sharma. In 2015, Kar transferred the Trust to his family members.
The Roshni Law proposed that property rights be granted to people who own state lands without authorization until the limit year of 1990, through a payment equivalent to the market rate in force that year, since “eviction of these lands is very difficult , if not impossible “. In 2005, the PDP government led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed relaxed the cut-off year to 2004, which was further relaxed until 2007 under the congressional government led by Ghulam Nabi Azad (Congress and the PDP were allied at the time).
The purpose of the law was to raise resources to take advantage of the state’s hydroelectric potential. While the government expected to get more than 25 billion rupees as regularization fees, a 2014 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General noted that only 76 million rupees had been raised from the transfer of invaded lands between 2007 and 2013.
Investigations have revealed irregularities such as the undervaluation of land, the adjudication of property without any payment to the state, and the regularization of prohibited encroachments, such as those of forest lands.
In 2011, a retired professor, SK Bhalla, filed a PIL alleging the large-scale encroachment of state and forest lands in J&K. In 2014, Bhalla filed another PIL, seeking a surveillance and action investigation against the culprits. On November 28, 2018, the State Administrative Council repealed the Law and canceled all pending applications. The Anti-Corruption Office registered 17 FIRs.
On October 9, the High Court approved an order on Bhalla’s PIL, requesting an investigation from the IWC and canceling all assignments “ab initio (from the beginning)”. The court also declared the Roshni Law “unconstitutional, against the law and untenable”, and ordered the UT administration to recover all land handed over under the legislation.
.
