Government lists 5,972 ‘illegal occupants’ of state land in Srinagar

Srinagar: Divisional administration Kashmir has listed 5,972 persons as “illegal occupants” of over 10,000 kanals of state land in Srinagar district. The list has been uploaded on the Divisional Commissioner Kashmir’s official website.

The divisional administration had recently started uploading of the names of beneficiaries of the Roshni Scheme along with the state land encroachers on the directions of the High Court after the latter had quashed the controversial Scheme.

As many as 4557 persons have been listed in Proforma-C (State land encroachment – recorded in revenue records, other than Roshni) and 1415 have been listed in Proforma-D (State land encroachment physically, but not shown in Revenue records, other than Roshni).

The list of the “illegal occupants” includes government employees, businessmen, farmers, etc. having allegedly encroached on vast tracts of land across the length and breadth of Srinagar district.

The J&K High Court in an order on October 9 had directed that details of “state land in unauthorised occupation” shall be disclosed on the government’s website, along with the names of the beneficiaries under the Roshni Act that was scrapped by the High Court. The beneficiaries under the Act included former state ministers, retired civil servants and politicians.

The High Court had directed the Government to retrieve and repossess such public land. A division bench of then Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Puneet Gupta had directed that the respondents shall take immediate steps for retrieval of public land.

The Jammu and Kashmir administration last year published names of over 63,000 individuals alleged to have occupied more than 15,000 hectares of forest land.

Several former ministers, bureaucrats, police officials, businessmen were named among beneficiaries of ROSHNI scheme and also in the list of government land encroachers.