Encroachment Blocks Industry

Jammu and Kashmir's industrial policy has, for years, rested on one comforting assurance: that the Union Territory has no shortage of land for setting up units. On paper, this is true. In practice, the moment a concrete project is taken up, every conceivable hurdle surfaces - bureaucratic delay, administrative buck-passing, and, most stubbornly, encroachment that no one seems able, or willing, to clear. The unresolved case of the SIDCO Industrial Estate at Balole, Bari Brahmana, is a textbook illustration of this gap between Government records and ground reality. The numbers alone tell a sobering story. Of 522 kanals of State land at Balole taken up for industrial development a decade ago, in 2016, only 236 kanals and 10 marlas have been formally handed over to SIDCO for allotment. Physical possession has been secured over barely 86 kanals and 10 marlas. That leaves a staggering 150 kanals still under encroachment - land that exists in Government files but remains inaccessible to the entrepreneurs who have already paid for it.

This is not a case of the administration being unaware of the problem. SIDCO has written to the Samba district administration repeatedly, seeking eviction of encroachers, and has even invoked the office of the District Magistrate. Yet each round of correspondence has produced nothing but another round of correspondence. Finally, a committee was constituted this April to identify the reasons for delay and fix responsibility. The committee has submitted its report, but the outcome is that SIDCO has again started writing a letter to the District Administration. The loop closes exactly where it began.

This is precisely the kind of institutional drift that erodes confidence in the UT's industrial promise. Thirty-seven units have already cleared the Single Window process and deposited their full land premium, only to find their expansion plans held hostage by encroachers who remain, by the Government's own admission, a law-and-order problem the Administration has not resolved. The responsibility for eviction rests squarely with the District Administration, and there should be no ambiguity on this point. Passing files back and forth between SIDCO and Samba, without a fixed timeline or accountability, serves no one except the encroachers themselves. Industrial growth in Jammu and Kashmir cannot be built on land that exists only in revenue records. The Government must step in decisively, set a firm deadline for eviction, and ensure that responsibility, once fixed, translates into action rather than another file note.