Can a democratically elected Government committed to safeguarding the interests of the State and its people become a partisan to scandalous grabbing of lakhs of kanals of State land and leave the State exchequer defrauded of thousands of crores of rupees? The CAG has unearthed this incredibly shocking scandal in the much touted Roshni scheme that was brought to culmination through an Act of the legislature called Roshni Act. Did it spread roshni meaning light or darkness is what the civil society will debate after the scam is fully uncovered. The Roshni Act of March 2001, as publicized then by the Government, was to give proprietary rights to the people who had been in unauthorised possession of Government land for a long time. The rationale behind this mission was to raise huge funds to the tune of 25,448 crore rupees by selling 20, 64,972 kanals of State land under unauthorized occupation. The Government envisaged investing the amount for generating electricity in the State. But the actual returns from the contemplated State land obtained till date are only a few crore rupees not more. In the test checked cases CAG has revealed that only 666 kanals of land transferred to the illegal possessors has caused the exchequer a loss of about 225 crore rupees. What will be the magnitude of total loss on transfer of 3.4 lakh kanals of land is mind boggling and one fails to think of it.
The entire scheme with all its ramifications is a mountain of corruption falsehood, fake documentation, hoodwinking and defrauding. Nothing has been more bizarre than the Roshni scandal. And the wonder of wonders is that the Government is fiercely shielding the culprits and miscreants for reasons better known to it by not making relevant documents and files accessible to the CAG by making one or the other pretext. Despite repeated reminders, files and documents were kept hidden from the CAG authority, and all it could do was to obtain some information from Deputy Commissioners of six districts of the J&K State and take them as samples and build the entire story on that premise.
There is a plethora of irregularities not one or two. Furthermore, the racket is widespread and many more people are involved than what is known at the surface. How come that lakhs of kanals of non-agricultural land have been shown as agricultural land and thus the beneficiaries have been made entitled to land free of cost under rules. How come that junior revenue officials have been given the powers to reduce the price of the land per kanal from what had been established by the committee? How come there are variations in the price tag of the transferred land in the same area and the same village? Does it not reveal a nexus between the revenue officials and the possessors of the land? Alternatively it could be a sordid case of nepotism and favouritism. But more surprising is that even the stamp duty has not been charged from the beneficiaries though there is no rule, no precedent and no practice of arbitrarily decreasing the price of the State lands. Crores of rupees have been lost to the State exchequer by way of loss of stamp money which the successful applicants had to pay otherwise in normal course. The rules provided for transfer of all agricultural lands to be free of cost. But this is beyond the scope, objectives and mandatory provisions of the Roshni Act. In the light of this, the CAG opines that all transfers of agricultural lands under the Act become illegal. To crown all these irregularities, after transfer of 3, 48,160 kanals under the Act was made, new encroachments are reportedly continuing unabated. Noticeably the area of public lands under encroachment was 20, 46,436 kanals in March 2013 as against 20, 64,972 kanals in November 2006.
For some time in the past there have been complaints of land grabbing by those linked to land mafia. Even in these columns also we have more than once commented on the issue and urged the Government to tighten its hold on land mafia in both regions. But with the exposition of the irregularities of Roshni Act, it becomes clear that land grabbers are not the only culprits against whom action has to be taken. Roshni Act shows how corruption can be legalised and formalised and made art of administrative rock hard decision. We would suggest that the Government should without any hesitation and without delay, order all beneficiaries to pay the cost of the land allotted to them at current market price and if they fail to do so by a specific time, they would forfeit their right to the title of the land.
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