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| Prime railway land worth crores encroached, authorities unconcerned | | Official-land mafia nexus alleged | |  Early Times Report
Jammu, Nov 6: Prime railway land worth crores is alleged to have been encroached upon by the land mafia around Railway Station here and by the Jammu-Udhampur track. What is more surprising is the silence that the authorities concerned and police have maintained. It seems as if they are unwilling to take legal action against the encroachers.
The land continues to be in the possession of the encroachers, who have now "permanently" set up their business concerns on it, for the past few years. Irony is that no effort is being made by the railway authorities to evict them.
The encroachment starts from the entrance of the railway station by rehriwalas and others. During peak hours, one finds it difficult to enter the railway station as these rehriwalas won't get to a side despite repeated horns by the operators of private and passenger vehicles, leading to a jam on the road outside.
In the open railway space on the right of the entrance where buses remain parked, some shopkeepers have encroached 20 to 50 ft of the land by erecting tents and keeping their items under it. Some others have covered the land unauthorisedly on the bank of the canal which acts as the boundary of the railway land. On this strip of land, they have permanently dumped their LPG cylinders, broken furniture items and other items of daily use and one or two others are illegally running dhabas and teastalls from there.
There have been encroachments by the Jammu-Udhampur track also. On the railway tunnel T1, someone has erected a structure and has been running his business from there with impunity from law.
But there is no one, including railway authorities and police, to take notice of all this. When contacted, a railway official said this was not possible without the consent of the railway authorities.
All the encroachments by this track were removed by the railway authorities with the help of police and district administration in February 2011 but these had again come up later and continue to be there.
The official said railways had purchased land from the state government on both sides of the Jammu-Udhampur track, at some places from 50 mt to 500 mt, keeping in view the future expansion plans. "This land now stands encroached at many places now," he informed.
He said though the railways had many times taken up the matter of these encroachments with the office of deputy commissioner, Jammu, it was yet to receive any response from it as of today.
An effort was also made by the land mafia in November 2013 to grab about 20 kanals of railway land near the canal. The alleged land grabber had also constructed "jhugies" to show his possession on this piece of land and rented them out to labourers.
As complaints of corruption against the railway authorities piled up two years or so back, CBI had conducted two raids.
One raid was carried out on the complaint of a Kashmir-based dealer of TMT bars. In his complaint, he had alleged that some railway officials had been demanding money from him to release his consignment. In second such raid, CBI sleuths had carried out checking at the city railway station and seized some record for scrutiny.
"The railways needs to be very careful as hundreds of kanals of its land has been lying vacant on both sides of the Jammu-Udhampur track and should make immediate efforts to get back the encroached land," the official said. |
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