Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Oct 20: Incredible it may sound but it is a fact that three years is too small a time for some bureaucrats of Jammu and Kashmir for transfer of land from one department to another that too for a project, which is to be entirely funded by the Union Government. This clearly indicates that bureaucratic hurdles coupled with slackness on the part of concerned authorities are creating road-blocks in timely execution of major projects in this State.
One such example is Regional Branch of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) at Jammu, which was approved by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in early 2011. Following this decision, the then Joint Secretary of the Ministry held a meeting with the then Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister and other senior officers of the State Government on January 31, 2011.
In this meeting, the Union Joint Secretary stressed the need for identifying and transferring at least 15 acres of suitable land free of cost to the Ministry for setting up a permanent campus. Accordingly, a Monitoring Committee was constituted vide Government Order No. 283-GAD dated March 4, 2011 to oversee the issues relating to the setting up of the Regional Centre of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, official sources told EXCELSIOR.
Thereafter, three locations were identified for the establishment of the permanent campus and the Central team comprising the then Director General, Indian Institute of Mass Communication and Joint Secretary, Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting visited these sites on July13 and 14, 2011. Finally, 123 kanals and 18 marlas land in village Keran in the outskirts of Jammu city was finalized to process it for transfer to the Higher Education Department for establishment of the Regional Branch of IIMC, sources informed.
Of 123 kanals and 18 marlas of land, 51 kanals of State Land and 37 kanals and 18 marlas of Forest Land were transferred to the Higher Education Department in the middle of 2012 and Jammu Development Authority was asked to transfer remaining 35 kanals of land for the project. The then Vice-Chairman of the Jammu Development Authority vide his communication dated August 28, 2012 agreed to place the land at the disposal of State Government under the provisions of Section 18(4)(1) of the J&K Land Development Act, 1970 on some terms and conditions.
Though the Higher Education Department met the main condition and paid Rs 1.05 crore on account of premium or development charges to the Jammu Development Authority, the transfer of land got delayed inordinately on the condition of payment of ground rent despite the fact that for purposes of transferring the possessory rights on the State land from one Government department to another department, the requirement to pay the ground rent was not feasible, sources said.
“It took more than three years to the Housing and Urban Development Department, which has administrative control over Jammu Development Authority, to resolve the issue with regard to ground rent and now the process of land transfer to the Higher Education Department for establishment of Regional Branch of IIMC has made significant progress with the Cabinet approval yesterday after a long gap of over four years since the sanctioning of Regional Branch and three years since the consent of the JDA to transfer land”, sources added.
“However, how much time the Higher Education Department will take to lease out the land to the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is beyond anybody’s guess because of the prevailing bureaucratic inertia”, sources said, adding “the Union Ministry would sanction funds and get work actually started on the ground only after the required chunk of land is formally leased out”.
“The fate of Regional Branch of IIMC clearly indicates that bureaucratic hurdles and slackness on the part of concerned authorities are creating road-blocks in the timely execution of major projects in Jammu and Kashmir”, sources regretted, adding “the inordinate delay in transferring of land from one department to another should be an eye-opener for the present PDP-BJP Coalition Government and it should immediately initiate measures to check this trend otherwise fate of more such projects would continue to hang in balance”.
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