Registries sans NOC to be probed: Haryana CM Khattar

Tribune News Service

Pradeep Sharma

Chandigarh, March 15

The BJP-JJP government has decided to hold an inquiry into all land registrations from 2010 to 2016 for which mandatory no-objection certificate (NOC) was not obtained by the Revenue Department, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced here today.

Intervening in a debate on the calling attention motion in the Haryana Assembly on irregularities in land registrations under Section 7-A of the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act, 1975, Khattar asserted that all records pertaining to land registrations would be probed to find any irregularities.

“The violations of 7-A in land registries in 140 tehsils and sub-tehsils will be investigated at a fast pace,” he asserted.

The calling attention motion was moved by Abhay Chautala (INLD), Kiran Chaudhry (Congress) and Balraj Kundu (Independent) among others.

Under Section 7-A of the Act of 1975, the sub-registrars are mandated to seek NOC from the Town and Country Planning Department in respect of land registration measuring less than two-and-a-half acres in the controlled areas in the vicinity of the municipalities in Haryana. Currently, NOC has to be sought for area less than one acre. Earlier, demanding a High Court-monitored CBI inquiry into the “mammoth registration scam”, Chaudhry alleged that officials and land mafia had enriched themselves at the cost of the public exchequer.

“By the government’s own admission, over 58,000 land registration deeds have been found to be in violation of the rules between April 2017 to August 2021 and over 250 officials are under the scanner. However, whatever has been unearthed by the official agencies is the tip of the iceberg,” she alleged.

Putting the government in the dock, Kundu alleged that the state government sat over the official report for nearly two years as the reports of irregularities had come in June 2020. “Either the bigwigs in the state government are not competent to take action or are in connivance with the guilty,” alleged Kundu. Abhay Chautala alleged that the state government was caught napping as large-scale irregularities in land registration had been reported from across Haryana, including Chief Minister Khattar’s home district Karnal.

Meanwhile, Revenue Minister Dushyant Chautala asserted that strict action was being initiated against accused officials, including sub-registrars, joint sub-registrars, registration clerks and patwaris.

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