Minister asks DDPO to reclaim 108 acres of ‘panchayat land’

MOGA: Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa has asked the Moga District Development and Panchayat Officer (DDPO) to get a case filed in the Court of Collector by the Gram Panchayat of Saleena village under Section 11 of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961, to reclaim 108 acres of pasture land on the name of gram panchayat.

Kulwinder Sandhu
Tribune News Service
Moga, February 21

Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa has asked the Moga District Development and Panchayat Officer (DDPO) to get a case filed in the Court of Collector by the Gram Panchayat of Saleena village under Section 11 of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961, to reclaim 108 acres of pasture land on the name of gram panchayat. A major portion of this land has been “sold” to influential persons from time to time in the past 65 years.

As per the Wajib-ul-Arj and consolidation scheme, the pasture land must have been entered in the revenue records in the name of the village panchayat because a group of local residents had left it for common purpose of cattle grazing after the consolidation in 1953 when this land was declared surplus by the government.

At the time of the consolidation, it was agreed by the co-owners of “Patti Sareen” of the village that 862 kanals and 16 marlas (108 acres) of land should be kept apart as “charand” (pasture land for cattle grazing) for common purpose and accordingly the Wajib-ul-Arj was made for the village.

As per the 1956 revenue record, though the names of the land owners remained as various co-owners, in the column of possession, it was described as “charand”. The residents of the village at that time agreed that no part of the land would be sold by anyone.

However, in the past few decades some “powerful and influential” persons have allegedly illegally occupied the entire stretch of 108 acres of the pasture land for farming purposes.

Ajay Sood, a local farmer, whose father had also left a few acres of land for “charand”, filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court a couple of years back seeking directions to restore the common land to the village panchayat. The court asked the Deputy Commissioner to look into the matter, but the administration in a magisterial probe maintained that the ownership rights of the disputed land were not transferred to the panchayat, therefore it could not be considered as common land.

Last year, Sood filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking appropriate directions to the district administration to correct the revenue record. A Division Bench of the HC comprising Justice Jaswant Singh and Justice Arun Kumar Tyagi granted liberty to the petitioner and gram panchayat to file a case under Section 11 of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 in the appropriate court to reclaim 108 acres of pasture land on the name of gram panchayat.

This issue was also raised by the Moga MLA Dr Harjot Kamal in the ongoing Budget Session of the Punjab Legislative Assembly. Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa in a reply to the House said he had asked the District Development and Panchayat Officer of Moga to get a case filed in the Court of Collector by the Gram Panchayat of Saleena village to reclaim the 108 acres of pasture land on the name of gram panchayat.

The background

As per the Wajib-ul-Arj and consolidation scheme, the pasture land must have been entered in the revenue records in the name of the Saleena village panchayat as a group of villagers had left the land for the common purpose of cattle grazing after the consolidation in 1953 when this land was declared surplus by the government.