Despite LG orders, JDA slow to compile data

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 3

Notwithstanding the warning of the Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) Girish Chandra Murmu, the higher-ups of the Jammu Development Authority (JDA) have failed to compile the exact data of the prime land encroached by influential land mafia in Jammu.

As officials are “busy” in compiling the data, the campaign to retrieve huge chunks of prime land, encroached by the mafia, is yet to be started.

Forty five days after the direction of the LG to the Vice-Chairman of the JDA to intensify the campaign to retrieve land under encroachment, the process to identify the encroached land is going on at a snail’s pace due to the alleged nexus between the influential land mafia and some officials of the JDA.

On January 17, Girish Chandra Murmu had directed the vice-chairman of the JDA to dismiss officials who failed to perform their duty or in any way connived with those behind encroachment.

The L-G had further asked the vice chairman to ensure that the enforcement staff was sensitised to keep the encroachers of the JDA land at bay. He had directed the vice-chairman to devise a mechanism to ensure that every official of the enforcement wing had a particular land parcel allotted to him for surveillance against encroachment.

Despite directions of the L-G, casual approach is being adopted by the higher-ups to prepare data of the encroached land and to start the drive to retrieve the land.

“We yet have to compile the exact data of the land under encroachment,” Director, Land Management, JDA, Puneet Sharma, told The Tribune when asked about the total land encroached by people.

Although officials were tight-lipped, official data revealed that 2,810 kanals (351.25 acres) of the prime land, belonging to the JDA, had been encroached by influential land grabbers in Jammu.

Out of a total of 17,884 kanals and 17 marlas (2235.5 acres) of the demarcated land with the JDA, 8,880 kanals and 18 marlas (1,110 acres) had been utilised for various development purposes.

Nearly, 750 kanals and 13 marlas (93 acres) of the demarcated land had been regularised in favour of illegal occupants under various government orders in regularised colonies.

………Land mafia active…..

• Over 352 acres of JDA land is encroached by influential land mafia in Jammu.

• Out of total 9,479 acres of land transferred to the JDA, 6818 acres have not been demarcated.

• The Comptroller and Auditor General, in his report in the year 2016, had also rapped the JDA for its failure to retrieve encroached lands in Jammu city and Rs 147 crore worth prime property.