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| Girdawaries cancelled, but no action initiated against revenue officials after lapse of two years | | Alleged encroachment of forest land at Bani | | Akshay Azad
Early Times Report
Jammu, Jan 17: The ever increasing level of corruption in Jammu and Kashmir could be attributed to failure of administration to initiate action against officials involved in corrupt practices and in one such case, the state revenue department has failed to initiate action against the alleged land grabbers, who had encroached upon hundreds of kanals of forest land in Bani area of Kathua even after the lapse of nearly two years.
Sources informed Early Times that nearly two years back, an alleged nexus of revenue officials and encroachers of forest land in Bani area had come to fore when then Forest Range Officer Badar Din was thrashed by the land grabbers on November 18, 2013 while he was on the job of demarcating the land in khasra No 716/1 in Patwar Halqa Bani on the bank of river Sewa for a nursery of Forest Department.
"Out of 83 kanals of forest land in this particular Khasra No, the revenue record of four kanals and five Marlas of land have been mutated on the name of two local inhabitants of the area while in real sense the land belongs to Forest Department", sources said.
"Even then Divisional Forest Officer, Billawar, vide his letter on July 25 2013, had also requested tehsildar Bani to cancel all the illegal girdawaris made by Revenue Department over Forest land", sources said, adding that some Revenue officials had made the entries in the records to give undue benefits to some influential individuals of Bani area.
Sources said 54 kanals of Forest land recorded in Revenue records under Khasra No. 404min/264 and 10 kanals and 10 marlas under Khasra No 391min/335 has been mutated on the name of some influential people by the Revenue Department. Besides 322 kanals and 18 Marlas of Forest land under Khasra No 1103min/371 had also been encroached in the same area as it has been mutated in revenue records.
Badar Din, who had filed a complaint with Vigilance Organisation, Jammu, seeking a probe into the mutation of land records in Bani area informed Early Times that Police had registered a case of trespassing against him and his team, which was later cancelled.
"Even then Bani Tehsildar Rajesh Basotra vide official communication 1341/59/OQ of December 2, 2013 to Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Bani, DC Kathua had accepted that false entries were made in the revenue records by revenue officials", he said, while showing the communiqué of Tehsildar.
Badar Din rued that some of the wrong entries were cancelled but after lapse of nearly two years, no action has been taken against the encroachers and the Revenue officials involved in the entire nexus. "Vast stretches of forest land are encroached in Bani area and a deep-rooted nexus has rampantly been plundering the forest wealth and encroaching upon the land but officials are least bothered and it seems that they have given free hand to land grabbers", he said.
Forest Ranger of Bani, Bupinder Singh said that they were going to establish Nursery in the area, where the encroachments were made. When asked if any action has been taken against the Revenue officials, he replied in negative.
Moreover, SDM Bani, Mohammad Anwar Bandey said that he had joined nearly an year back and the case was more than two years old. "As per my knowledge, a 3-member committee was constituted to probe into the case, headed by ADC Kathua", he said, and assured that he would look into the matter. |
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