Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Dec 27: The much-hyped Roshni Scheme, which was launched to vest ownership rights on the people holding Government land illegally for years together, has failed to yield desirable results because of flaws in various provisions of the Act. It has generated meager Rs 76 crore as against the target of Rs 25,000 crore, which the Government had planned to utilize for tapping the massive hydropower potential of the State.
According to the official figures, a total of 2,56,792 applications have been received by the Revenue Department for vesting of ownership rights of the Government land under the illegal possession of the applicants. Out of this, 1,65,000 applications have been disposed of with the approval to vest ownership rights of 17,86,000 kanal of Government land across the State.
Against the approval to 17,86,000 kanal of Government land, ownership rights have been conferred in respect of only 6,04,662 kanal of land ever since the launch of the scheme in 2007. Moreover, revenue to the tune of only Rs 76 crore has been generated till date against Rs 316 crore worked out in respect of approved cases.
“These figures clearly indicate that Roshni Scheme has turned out to be a big failure and failed to meet the objective behind its launch”, official sources told EXCELSIOR, adding “despite being aware of the fact that flaws in various provisions of the Act governing the Roshni Scheme have played the spoilsport, the Government has not found it appropriate to take corrective steps to ensure effective implementation of the scheme”.
“On one hand the Government has maintained silence over removing the flaws in the provisions and on the other hand it has not started the process of eviction as under the existing Act the time for regularization of land has lapsed”, sources said while disclosing that a large number of people, who didn’t deposit the money after applying for regularization of land under the Roshni Act and those who didn’t apply at all for regularization of encroached land are liable to face eviction under the Act.
About the flaws in the provisions, which led to scheme failing to yield desirable results, sources said, “there is confusion among the authorities concerned over interpretation of Girdawari extract. As per the Act, only those land would be regularized whose Girdawari has been entered in the revenue record but the Girdawari in respect of State land was banned several years prior to the launch of Roshni Scheme”.
In response to a question, sources said, “initially the Revenue authorities approved the cases for regularization of land on the basis of water and electricity connections or other claims of possession shown by the applicants”.
“Khasra number vise rates for regularization of land is also one of the reasons behind failure of the Roshni Scheme. The rates should have been fixed keeping in view the location of the land and its commercial and non-commercial value”, sources said, adding “it was only due to this reason that even those applicants whose cases were sanctioned by the Government didn’t deposit the amount”.
When contacted, Minister for Revenue, Relief and Rehabilitation, Raman Bhalla confirmed that Roshni Scheme has failed to yield desirable results. “We have approached the Law Department seeking some amendments in the Act governing the scheme so that substantial amount is generated and the objective of the scheme could be met with”, he added.
Follow our WhatsApp channel