Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir government has kept a separate budgetary allocation of Rs 50 crore for retrieval of land from beneficiaries of repealed Roshni Act.
A senior Revenue Department official informed that separate allocation has been kept to repay the premium deposited by beneficiaries who were vested with ownership rights under the Roshni Act.
“Government agencies are retrieving land, vast tracts of land have been taken back by the administration,” he said, adding that “keeping separate budgetary allocation will help in expediting the process of retrieval.”
As per the officials, over Rs 70 crore was collected as premium by the J&K administration from Roshni beneficiaries.
A year after the High Court struck down the Roshni Act, the Jammu and Kashmir government began an exercise to retrieve the land granted under this Act to beneficiaries.
On November 1, 2020, the Union Territory administration cancelled all land transfers that took place under the JK State Land (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001 – also known as the Roshni Act – under which 2.5 lakh acres of land was to be transferred to the existing occupants.
A senior revenue department official informed that the district administrations have been asked to retrieve the land after publishing the list of beneficiaries.
The Roshni Act was enacted in 2001 with the twin objective of generating resources for financing power projects and conferment of proprietary rights to the occupants of state land.
The High Court had declared the Act “unconstitutional” and asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to take up the case.
The revenue department was asked to work out a plan to retrieve large tracts of state land vested under the Act. According to the High Court order, a total of 6,04,602 kanals (75,575 acres) of state land had been regularised and transferred to the occupants. This included 5,71,210 kanals (71,401 acres) in Jammu and 33,392 kanals (4174 acres) in the Kashmir province.
According to the order, complete identities of influential persons, including ministers, legislators, bureaucrats, government officials, police officers and businessmen, their relatives or persons holding benami for them, who have derived benefit under the Roshni Act, will be made public within a period of one month.
The scheme was finally repealed by the then Governor Satya Pal Malik on November 28, 2018.
Amid reports about its widespread misuse, the entire legislation was challenged before the High Court which stayed the proceedings under the Act and also directed that neither the occupants having been conferred upon the ownership rights shall sell these lands nor can raise constructions on such lands.
In 2014, the Comptroller and Auditor General had estimated that only Rs 76 crore had been raised from the transfer of encroached land between 2007 and 2013, against the target of Rs 25,000 crore.