HC okays panel for examination of murky land deals around Chandigarh

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday approved a panel of officers to examine the alleged illegal mutations of village common panchayat lands in the name of individuals in the periphery of Chandigarh.

The panel includes Rahul Tiwari, Rupnagar divisional commisioner, and Tanu Kashyap, joint development commissioner, Integrated Rural Development, Punjab, as commissioners, and Amardeep Singh Bains, deputy director (revenue), and Hardial Singh Chatha, additional deputy commissioner (D), Fatehgarh Sahib, as collectors.

They will hear the pending as well as fresh appeals against the land grab cases of village common land and forest land in villages of Mohali district. The panel will be assisted by a team of 59 lawyers, whose names too have been approved by the high court. These lawyers will represent panchayats. It is not immediately clear whether they will examine those cases also where government has already given a clean chit or where no dispute was raised.

As per rough estimates, nearly 25,000 acres are illegally occupied in Mohali.

The high court was hearing a 2013 petition by a Nayagaon resident seeking a probe into the mutation of village common land in the name of influential persons in Nayagaon and other nearby villages.

In 2013, the high court had appointed a commission headed by justice Kuldip Singh, a former Supreme Court judge. The reports given by the panel had named several politicians, police officers and bureaucrats, who had grabbed panchayat (shamlat or common) land in violation of laws that prohibit the sale of village common land and forest land.

The panel, after examining revenue record of 336 villages in Mohali, had found fault in 30,000 to 35,000 sale deeds of property in the periphery of Chandigarh.

On Thursday, the high court directed the Punjab government to not transfer these officers for a reasonable period of time. Taking note of submissions of case amicus curiae senior advocate ML Sarin, the high court also sought to know about government plans on setting up a panel on similar lines.

Previously, media reports had quoted Punjab local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu as stating that in Mohali alone, land worth more than Punjab’s entire debt, which is pegged at Rs 2.10 lakh crore, had been grabbed illegally. He had said that a committee of experts headed by former judge SS Saron and former director general of police Chander Shekhar was being formed to give advice to the panel on freeing the government land.