SC issues notice to Centre on Defence land encroachment
A notice has been issued to the Centre seeking its answer on a PIL seeking CBI probe into alleged encroachment and exploitation of defence land across the country, by the Supreme Court on Monday.
A committee headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam decided to hear the petition as per which mismanagement of defence lands leading to various scams including Sukna, Adarsh Society and others. While issuing notice, the bench said, the issue requires our consideration.
NGO common cause filed a petition on which the court passed the order which also gave the direction for a complete audit of defence lands to recover the lands under encroachment along with the losses to the public exchequer on account of its unauthorized and commercial exploitation.
Prashant Bhushan, advocate, appearing for the petitioner has gone through various CAG reports to draw attention to encroachment of defence land.
With a holding of 17.31 lakh acres, defence ministry is the major landholder in the country out of which roughly 1.57 lakh acres are located within the 62 notified Cantonments and about 15.96 lakh acres are outside these Cantonments, as submitted by him.
It is proposed that the prevailing misconduct of defence lands is the reason of various land scams which have come to known recently ,counting Sukna land scam, Adarsh Society land Scam, Jammu & Kashmir land scam, Jodhpur land scam, Lohegaon, Pune land scam and Kandivli, Mumbai land scam.
The petition alleged that in most defence land scams excavated over the past few years, defence estates officials have been found to be hand-in-glove with army officials and private developers. As peer the NGO’s report there is total lack of accountability and lucidity in the use and management of defence land, resulting in a huge loss to the public exchequer.
It required a court-monitored CBI investigation into illegitimate and irregularities in the management of defence lands, formation of an self-governing task force for complete audit of defence lands, revival of defence lands under encroachment and compensation of losses occasioned to public exchequer on account of their illegal use and commercial use’’.
CAG pointed out that the encroachment of defence land has increased from 6,903 acres in January 1997 to 14,539.38.
Source: Financial Express
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