Report on encroachers soon

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Sep 24, 2012: With the real estate boom and skyrocketing of land prices, government lands which are valued at thousands of crores of rupees once have been encroached by real estate agents in the city.

Amidst allegations of encroachment of hundreds of crores of rupees worth valuable lands in the heart of the city at Daspalla Hills, district joint-collector will soon start preparing a status report. Besi-des, vigilance and enforcement personnel will also prepare a report into land transactions covered by government poramboke survey No.s 1196, 1197, 1027 and 1028. They are also examining if there was any collusion of real estate agents and officials in exempting 7½ acres from coming under the Urban Land Ceiling Regulation Act (ULCRA) and creating fake documents and revenue passbooks to regularise layouts or building permissions.

“At the initial stages of ULCRA, in the matter of verification of the declaration of land under Section 6 and determination of surplus lands under Section 8, the intermediaries often connived with ULCR officials so as to ensure that the full extent of the surplus land was not brought to light. At later stages, especially in the matter of granting exemptions under Section 20, both ULCRA officials, CCLA (erstwhile CCLR) and the state revenue department misused discretion to grant exemption and allowed vast and valuable extents of urban land to slip away from government’s hands and put to uses not envisaged in the Act,” alleged former bureaucrat and Forum for Better Visakha (FBV) convenor E.A.S. Sarma.

Finally, even after exem-ptions were granted under Section 20, local ULCRA and revenue officials had the responsibility to monitor the use of the exempted lands and, in the event of violation of the conditions precedent to the exemption orders, the said lands sho-uld be revoked, he added.

Dadi Veerabhadra Rao, leader of opposition in the Legislative Council raised the issue recently, in Ques-tion Hour, of the alleged encroachment of lands in Daspalla Hills, stating that several illegal structures had come up on the 60 acre land. He said that the rest of the land was classified as government land more than a decade ago and valued at thousands of crores of rupees but some encroachers had managed to sell a large extent.

“I had a talk with the revenue principal secretary and as per the assurances given by revenue minister N. Raghuveera Reddy on the floor of the house, the joint collector will soon send a status report on the Daspalla Hills land issue after we receive a written communication. The vigilance department will also send a report. We are also looking at the angle of taking disciplinary action against ULC staff if we find any violations,” district collector V. Seshadri told this correspondent.