Each passing days convinces the public that a powerful nexus has come to be among the land mafia, revenue functionaries and some of the politicians with vested interests. It is the umpteenth time that we have raised the issue in these columns and brought to light details of land grabbing, and nefarious designs of involved people who are hell bent to do whatever they can to retain possession of the land. The most appalling case is of Pargalta near Bajalta Railway Station under Khasra No 219, where the land grabbers collected goons and during the darkness of the night deployed heavy machinery to demolish the construction and thus make their case strong as the owners of the land. Though, the police swooped on them and scuttled their designs yet in other cases the revenue functionaries are reported to be deliberately delaying reports of particular cases referred to them by higher authorities. In some cases, the lower revenue functionaries were required to submit their report within two weeks but despite lapse of six years or more no report has been submitted. What is more disgusting is that lower level revenue officers, who are working in tandem with the land grabbers and politicians with vested interest make one or the other pretext for prolonging submission of report on land grab cases.
This is a very sad state of affairs in the Revenue Department. Every officer in this Department is trying to pass the buck to another Department or organization and thus absolve itself of any responsibility or duty, Hundreds of thousands of kanals of Government and forest land has already been illegally occupied and those who have done it and against whom inquiry is ordered are roaming as free birds knowing that nobody is going to touch them. The Government should set its house in order and take stringent action against all involved in such cases, irrespective of their stature.