The High Court Monday directed the government to inform it within a month about the outcome of the investigation of the case against the officers who allegedly granted undue benefit to some “bureaucrats” by designating some ecologically-fragile areas as permissible in the land use map of the previous Master Plan for Pahalgam.
Hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on the preservation of Pahalgam health resort, a division bench of Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Rajnesh Oswal observed that apparently only the prayer with regard to the completion of the investigation of the FIR registered in 2008 regarding fraudulent acquisition of land survived in the plea.
“It is an admitted position that, as on date, the Master Plan 2005-2025 is not in existence and that Master Plan 2015-2032 is in place,” the court said.
It granted a month to Additional Advocate General M A Chashoo to file the status report regarding the outcome of the investigation of the case (FIR No 27/2008 P/S VOK, now ACB) after he sought time.
While a committee of some officers was constituted in 2004 to prepare the Master Plan for Pahalgam, the plan was allegedly prepared to pave way for some influential people to acquire land and go for illegal constructions.
It is alleged that while the plan was being formulated, some top bureaucrats acquired land in ecologically fragile areas with the help of the land mafia and in their personal interest managed to designate these areas as permissible in the land use map of the Master Plan.
While the land across the Sheesh Nag Nallah and Manipal Nallah in Chanhaji, a virgin area falling in the forest covered foothills was allegedly declared permissible without getting comprehensive feedback, the residential areas of Rinzipal and Bradihaji on the other side of Nallah has been declared non-permissible zone.
The committee allegedly resorted to misrepresentation, manipulations and distortions whereby it proposed that sub zone A-14, an inaccessible area on the other side of Sheesh Nag Nallah, be de-notified to permit construction of hutments and other facilities while ignoring the sub-zone A-13 having sizeable population and being contiguous with the already de-notified area.