The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : `Encroached land should have been auctioned in phases'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 11, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Encroached land should have been auctioned in phases'

Staff Reporter

Real-estate lobby benefited, says A.T. Ramaswamy

CHECKING OWNERSHIP: A.T. Ramaswamy, chairman of the Joint Legislature Committee formed to look into encroachment of government land in and around Bangalore (fourth from right), committee members and officials at B.M. Kaval in Bangalore on Thursday, where 162 acres of land is suspected to have been encroached upon. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: The auctioning of nearly 1,000 acres of land recovered from encroachers in and around Bangalore should have been done in phases. This would have fetched a better price than the Rs. 1,080 crore garnered in the auctions held recently, A.T. Ramaswamy, chairman of the Joint Legislature Committee on encroachment of government land in and around Bangalore, said here on Thursday.

"The Government could have retained the land for future use to fulfil its social welfare obligations such as schools, hospitals, infrastructure and so on. The small pieces of land that would serve no purpose could have been auctioned," Mr. Ramaswamy told presspersons after a round of inspections on Kanakapura Road, Rajarajeshwarinagar and other places.

No publicity

He said the auction process was not given adequate publicity, and there was every indication that most of the players at the auction were real-estate developers who bought land at far below the market rate. "Now the Government has allowed the real-estate lobby to develop the land and make huge profits," Mr. Ramaswamy said.

He said he was pushing for setting up special courts to try cases related to encroachment, so that officials and politicians involved in cheating the Government of crores of rupees could be brought to book. About 27,000 acres of government land had been encroached upon, he said.

The committee visited four areas on Thursday, after which Mr. Ramaswamy directed officials to initiate action to recover land valued at over Rs. 400 crore. At B.M. Kaval on Kanakapura Road, the prominent brewery and distillery company Khodays was found to have encroached upon 310 acres. At Vaddarahalli, Khodays and Best Club had illegally occupied seven acres, while at Kempapura Agrahara, the Khoday family had connived with officials to create fake documents and land records to encroach upon seven acres of land, Mr. Ramaswamy said.

Near Best Club, while the Khodays had encroached and fenced four acres, Best Club had "taken over" 2.2 acres, it was found. At Kempapura Agrahara, seven acres of a tank bed had been encroached upon.

J.C. Madhuswamy, Visveshwara Hegde Kageri and S. Raghu, MLAs; and M.P. Nadagouda, MLC, who are members of the committee, accompanied Mr. Ramaswamy.

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