Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, June 14: Undeterred by the opposition from several separatist leaders including Yasin Malik and a Cabinet Minister, the Government has extended its anti-encroachment drive on huge chunk of forest land in eight more localities, taking total to 12 and asked the existing high level team of Forest and Revenue Departments to identify the land grabbers.
“The drive, which was earlier confined to four VVIP colonies of Bhatindi, Sidhra, Sunjwan and Raika, all falling on outskirts of Jammu City, has now been extended to eight more prominent localities,” official sources told the Excelsior.
The localities brought under the drive launched by the Government to identify forest land encroached upon by influential land grabbers including political persons, land mafia and other VVIPs included Roop Nagar, Bajalata, Janipura, Chowki Chowra, Nagrota, Sungal, Domail and Jandrah.
The Government has asked the existing panel headed by Chief Conservator of Forests (Demarcation) OP Sharma to extend its driver from existing four VVIP localities to 12. The list of eight new localities, which have been included in the anti-encroachment drive on forests land, has been handed over to the panel of officials by the Government order.
When approached for comments, Forests Minister Bali Bhagat confirmed that he has extended the drive to get forest land evicted from grabbers whosoever they may be or whatever influence they may enjoy from four localities to 12 by adding eight more in the list by an official order. He declared that he was not worried about the campaign launched against him by the separatists and other persons on “communal lines” saying the nature belongs to all and not to any community.
“If the green forest cover is encroached upon by influential persons, politicians and land mafia, it is bad for humanity and not for one community. If we are able to get the forest land evicted from the mafia, it will benefit all people of Jammu and Kashmir as well as the Government and not any particular community,” Bhagat said, adding that the Panel has been asked to identify more than 3000 kanals land of forest encroached upon in these dozen localities.
“The Panel has been asked to do its job without any fear and expeditiously. Two months term of the Panel, which had expired on June 1, has been extended by another two months,” the Forests Minister said.
The Government has by an official order on April 1 ordered survey of four VVIP localities inhabited by former Union Ministers, ex-Chief Ministers, serving and retired bureaucrats and leading colonizers on outskirts of Jammu City to identify nearly 2000 kanals forest land running into thousands of crores of rupees encroached upon by them in raising palatial bungalows and construction of flats.
“Now the drive has been extended to eight more localities and encroached land was around 3000 kanals,” sources said.
The four VVIP colonies, where the survey had been ordered earlier, included Bhatindi, Sidhra, Sunjawan and Raika, all falling on outskirts of the City, which have witnessed mushrooming growth of habitations during past one and half decades with several senior political leaders including former Union Ministers, ex-Chief Ministers, bureaucrats and builders having raised bungalows while construction of private flats by the builders was also going on in full swing.
The high level team constituted by the Government by an order of the GAD for identifying encroachments on the Forest land is headed by Chief Conservator of Forests (Demarcation) OP Sharma and comprised Regional Director, Land Records, Rajesh Sharavan, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Jammu VK Senthil, Director Land Management in JDA Dr Gurjit Singh and DFO Demarcation BL Raina.
Sources said though the Government has set the process into motion to vacate encroachments from forest land all over the State, it has started special drive for dozen localities as no previous Government had bothered to touch the VVIP localities, where influential builders and colonizers have been making thousands of crores by raising flats and selling plots under well knit nexus of officials of Forest, Revenue and other Departments in the past.
“The high level team was constituted and drive ordered after an in-house survey conducted by the Forest Department revealed that at least 2000 kanals of land in the four localities, which once belonged to the Forest Department had been encroached upon by the VVIP and colonizers in-league with officials of several Departments,” sources said, adding that value of the encroached land runs into several thousands of crores.
It may be mentioned here that the Committee has also found that in some of the cases, the Forest and Revenue Departments had destroyed the record pertaining to some localities. However, some of the records dating back to Maharaja’s time was available to establish that the encroached land was green area.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel