Updated: November 24, 2020 7:49:15 am
Haseeb Drabu
Former PDP leader Haseeb Drabu and three of his relatives; Congress treasurer KK Amla and three members of his family; and four National Conference leaders, including Sajjad Kichloo and Haroon Chaudhary, are on a list of around 400 alleged illegal beneficiaries drawn up by the J&K administration in connection with the Roshni land scam.
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.
The list, prepared on the instructions of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, also names the former Minister of Congress and former Doda MLA Abdul Majid Wani and the former Chairman of J&K Bank MY Khan. The court had ordered the names to be put into the public domain and more are expected to come out.
Last month, the High Court ordered an IWC investigation into land allocation under the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Acquisition of Property from Occupants) Act 2001, commonly known as the Roshni Act. The CBI has registered multiple FIRs in the matter. The court also asked for a list of beneficiaries.
In its order, the High Court mentioned the names of the former Minister of Finance and leader of Congress, Raman Bhalla, as well as some businessmen. The latest status report submitted by the Jammu Divisional Commissioner and Chief Conservative of Forests to the court in the case names an education trust led by former BJP minister and former Kalakote MLA Abdul Gani Kohli.
Sources said hundreds of acres of state forests and lands were illegally transferred to influential politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats and judicial officials throughout J&K under the Act, with the amount of the alleged scam set at more than Rs 25 billion.
Others on the list include hotelier Mishtaq Ahmed Chaya, retired IAS officer (rank of chief secretary) Mohd Shafi Pandit and his wife Nighat, former North Carolina leader and Attorney General Aslam Goni, and various government officials and former legislators. .
Drabu, the former finance minister at J&K, said in 1956 that his grandfather had bought 4 kanals (0.5 acres) “from a High Court judge.” “He paid the stamp duty and other fees to the government. We have all the documents. When my grandfather passed away, he went to my father. In 2006 or 2007-8, I don’t remember exactly, the government offered a plan to convert the lease into free ownership with a fixed premium. After 2012 or 13, my father made the family settlement. Out of the 4 earth kanals, I got 1 kanal (0.125 acres), my brother, my mother and my cousin also got one earth kanal each. So what do I say, where is the scam? Everything is rubbish. At that time (the Roshni scheme), he was not even in any government position. “
Former Minister Abdul Majid Wani, mentioned on the list, denied having invaded or regularized lands under the Roshni Law. “With the grace of the Almighty, I have not committed such illegal things. However, I legally bought land in Nowabad, Sunjwan (Jammu), in 1994. “While the North Carolina leader and former Kishtwar MLA Kichloo’s phone was off, a call to Goni’s number from a party colleague came to a message saying that the incoming installation was not available.
The Roshni Law proposed that property rights be granted to people who own state lands without authorization until the limit year of 1990, with a payment equivalent to the market rate in force that year, since “the eviction of these lands is very difficult ”. In 2005, the PDP government led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed relaxed the cut-off year to 2004, which was moved to 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 for hydroelectric projects. While the government hoped to obtain more than Rs 25 billion as regularization fees, a 2014 CAG report noted that only Rs 76 million had been obtained 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 and the regularization of prohibited encroachments such as those of forest lands. In 2007, sources said, there were cases of agricultural land being literally given away and urban land being transferred at deep discounts. The rules were formulated to allow the change of use of agricultural and forest land to commercial, sources said.
North Carolina leader Mohammad Sayeed Akhoon, whose name is on the government-prepared list of beneficiaries, said: “I only have one piece of land in Jammu. I bought it from a resident in 1993-94 when I left the Valley after the militancy. It was a desert area then. When the Roshni plan was announced, I paid the price set by the government. “
Retired IAS officer Mohammad Shafi Pandit said that the land in question had been leased to his mother-in-law in 1953. “The lease was renewed again in 1976 and was valid until 2016. But before that, the government devised the Roshni scheme … The government did not renew the lease and we had to pay it. We paid decent rates, which were 25 percent of the market price. This is higher than the price the government paid for land acquired for its own projects. Also, this is a norm in almost every state and land is given to people at 10-15 percent of market value. “
In 2011, a retired professor, SK Bhalla, presented a PIL on the matter. In 2014, following the CAG disclosures, Bhalla filed another PIL, seeking a surveillance investigation. On November 28, 2018, then-Governor Satyapal Malik’s State Administrative Council repealed the law and canceled all pending applications. The Anti-Corruption Office registered 17 FIRs in the matter.
On October 9 of this year, the High Court approved an order on Bhalla’s PIL directing a CBI investigation and canceling all assignments “ab initio (from the start)”. 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.
The court also ordered the administration to publish all the information related to the Act on a website. This included details of the state lands that were in unauthorized occupation, along with the identity of the invaders; applications received under the Roshni Act of 2001; the valuation of the land; the amounts paid by the beneficiaries; the people to whom the property had been granted; and also other transfers, if any, recognized by the authorities.
He also asked the government to publish the details of all influential people and those who own benami land for them, who benefited under the Roshni Law.
with ENS, Srinagar, Jammu
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