It looks really interesting that there should be any sort of practice either by any type of convenience or out of sheer ignorance that a project should be constructed or erected on a property by the Government or any of its agencies which was not legally transferred to it as a buyer or the vendee. How could those indulging in this practice, due to any reason whatsoever, not look at it from the angle of a very common practice of buying and selling immovable properties where it is fully satisfied beforehand whether the vendor possessed all rights to sell in the capacity of its rightful owner. The chain of title to the property must be ascertained to ensure that the property was free from all encumbrances, titles passing legally and rightfully up to the present vendor in respect of the said property and was easily marketable as also free of all charges. That being the simple thumb rule in respect of ascertaining encumbrances, there are instances when projects are initiated and constructed on such properties, particularly related to roads and buildings, where the land or other immovable property did not possess valid title and was later found not being unencumbered or just the legal procedure was bypassed.
In such a hasty, non serious and illegal manner, all those projects coming up are susceptible to risks of litigations, stays and other court injunctions resulting in wastage of money, time and efforts by the Government through its executing agencies whatsoever. In addition to the norm being to ‘search’ for such chain of titles of a particular property in the Registrar’s office to full satisfaction, instructions from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Chief Secretary are there for addressing the main issue of encumbrances before initiating any project. Despite all this, it is beyond one’s comprehension as to why there should take place in any part of the UT any breach of or departure from the set procedures and practices. A natural corollary to this all demands that money should be advanced by the Finance Department to the intending Government Department or agency only after the main issue of ascertaining and verifying chain of titles and non encumbrances was satisfied beyond any doubt. It, therefore, infers that works should be initiated on the projects only when it was established beyond any doubt that there was no land or associated legal issue involved so that time wasted on avoidable court cases and complicacies could be circumvented in order that the projects got completed in time and dedicated to people to reap the benefits there-from. Roads and Buildings sectors needed, in particular, to pay a careful heed to these basic requirements in respect of starting works on related projects.
However, we suppose that there must be in vogue a practice and a procedure in a standardised format devised by the Legal Department of verifying all these basic requirements as dealt herein in respect of encumbrances etc by the executing or initiating Government department before according sanction to a project by the Competent Authority so as to pre-empt and avoid complications later on. If not, then it is all the more surprising that at a stage where such basic irregularities could be checked, is in itself found wanting in to have a procedure and practice to overrule, reverse and disallow the sanction. Make a mechanism, right from the top, so much foolproof that at the initiating, recommending and executing levels there could remain no exit points of violation or bypassing of ”Dos and Don’ts”. Leaving everything at the junior or ‘subordinate’ levels, it is feared, often tend to err deliberately or even ”innocently”. Devising set norms, procedures, rules, guidelines and made the same as integral part of project proposals at higher levels and considered for sanction only when none of the prerequisites is left unattended, would obliterate and completely rule out such breaches as not addressing the vital issue of encumbrances at the very outset.
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