The Jagadish Shettar government is considering a proposal to revive the AT Ramaswamy committee report on encroachment of government land in Bangalore. The committee had unearthed over 40,000 acres of land worth Rs 50,000 crore encroached in and around Bangalore.
The JDS-BJP coalition government then had formed a Joint Legislature Committee (JLC) headed by Ramaswamy to probe encroachments. The committee submitted two reports. Not much was done by the successive governments to implement the reports.
The report of task force on government land encroachment across the state headed by V Balasubramanian would also be taken up.
The BJP-ruled government has now shortlisted retired additional chief secretaries K Jairaj and Balasubramaniam (task force head) to suggest to government ways and means to implement both the reports. "The government is serious about implementing these reports. Precious land worth several thousand crore rupees has been encroached upon by land mafia. We know the government has to antagonize several influential people. Despite this, a team involving Jairaj and Balasubramaniam will be constituted to implement both the reports," deputy chief minister K S Eshwarappa, who also holds revenue portfolio, told TOI.
Another attempt to identify encroached land was made by the Yeddyurappa government. It formed a task force headed by Balasubramanian in September 2009. However, the then revenue minister G Karunakara Reddy declined to accept the report faulting the former bureaucrat of flouting norms while submitting the report.
Eshwarappa said a decision would be taken to reopen both the reports.
Karnataka Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act-2007 has also been passed proposing imprisonment for land grabbers. However, the bill is pending before the President.
For the full text of the report in the ToI, click here.
My eyes almost popped out of their sockets on reading this. Well, is one to believe this is actually happening? But, on the other hand, possibly the government has realised that the only way to making a come back in the ensuing elections is to try and restore its badly dented credibility. Whatever, it is a welcome development, particularly since the two ex-bureaucrats involved too carry a lot of credibility. Also, after having made this announcement, if they now back out, the damage can be even greater than that faced now. So now, they have no option other than to move on it, and do a sincere job of it all.
Also, I would like to think that this is all resulting out of a realisation that times have changed, and the old ways cannot take you too far any more.
Muralidhar Rao
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The report is available
A T Ramaswamy report is available at http://judgesplot4plot.com/Plot4plot/077_02_ATR.InterimReport1.htm. A quick read indicates that the report is very comprehensive with causes cited and suggestions for eliminating the loss. It is astonishing that neighbouring states have been successful in removing the encroachments to a large extent while Bangalore finds it hard to emulate similar formulae. Instead of allowing or legalizing the unlawful (like akrama-sakrama), it is better to prevent large-scale irregularities in the first place.
Revenue and BDA require the biggest cleanup of all though Wakf Board with a higher number of encroached land was a little surprising. What with skeletons tumbling out of BBMP at regular intervals and other departments corrupt in one way or another, rightful implementation and optimum usage of tools like RTI, RTS (right to services) etc. seem to be the only way out.
nara illa..
they will just talk..nothing really works..very evident its all for the elections..they have not been able to reign in evn the rouge BBMP workers..what will they do with the more powerful political lobby responsible for the encroachments indicated in the ATR report?
few other election related jobs being done:
and the list goes on..unfortunate but if the ATR report is really implemented..there will be many wrongs corrected..but it will never happen for sure!