The Hindu 30.01.2014
13 lakh acres of land encroached upon in State
A whopping 13,02,241 acres of government land in the
State has been encroached upon. Of this, only 1,00,555 acres has been
cleared, according to Revenue Minister V. Srinivas Prasad.
Replying
to Janata Dal (Secular) member Basavaraj Horatti during Question Hour
in the Legislative Council on Wednesday, Mr. Prasad said the State has
62,25,339 acres of government land and around one-fifth has been
encroached upon.
According to district-wise data of
encroachments furnished by the Minister, Dakshina Kannada district
topped the list with encroachment on 1,95,638 acres, followed by Shimoga
(1,49,604 acres), Chickmagalur (1,04,280 acres) and Udupi (85,969
acres).
Bangalore Urban district, that comprises
Bangalore city, has encroachments on 34,111 acres while the districts
surrounding the city, such as Bangalore Rural (14,393 acres),
Ramanagaram (74,611 acres) and Chickballapur (79,563 acres) too have
substantial extent of encroachments.
The revenue
division-wise data shows that Mysore division, comprising eight
districts of Mysore, Hassan, Mandya, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada,
Chickmagalur, Kodagu and Chamarajanagar accounts for highest
encroachments on 5,78,934 acres. This is followed by Bangalore Division
(4,79,446 acres), Gulbarga Division (1,51,604 acres) and Belgaum
Division (92,246 acres).
Mr. Prasad said deputy
commissioners of the districts were in the process of preparing a
time-bound district-level action plan for clearing encroachments in
their jurisdictions as per the directive issued by the government.
The
Minister said the process of implementation of the recommendations by
the A.T. Ramaswamy committee and the Task Force for Recovery of Public
Lands, headed by the former bureaucrat V. Balasubramanian was under way.
This included formation of a high-level committee headed by the Chief
Secretary, district-level committees headed by deputy commissioners,
taluk-level committees led by tahsildars and inter-departmental
committees comprising Principal Secretaries, to deal sternly with
encroachments.
