Roshni Act: J&K High Court orders CBI probe, declares all allotments Void
The J&K High Court on Friday ordered a CBI probe into an alleged scam in the Roshni land scheme. The J&K administration had also ordered a probe by ACB into alleged instances of cornering high-value prime lands in Jammu and Srinagar cities by misusing the law.
Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Friday ordered a CBI probe into an alleged scam in the Roshni land scheme. A division bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal ordered the CBI probe into irregularities in the scheme.
Declaring the Roshni Act “unconstitutional” and all allotments void, the J&K High Court on Friday ordered a probe through Central Bureau Investigation (CBI) into the 25,000 crores Roshni Land Scam. The court declared the Act unconstitutional and held all allotments made under the act void ab initio.
A division bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal allowed a petition that sought transfer of the Rs 25,000 crore land allotment scam under the Roshni Act from the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to the CBI.
The Central Agency will investigate more than a dozen FIRs registered by the ACB in 2013.
The court also ordered that the investigation of the land scam be transferred to the CBI which will file the status report within eight weeks.
The court also said that J&K Chief Secretary will ensure uninterrupted investigation which will also be directed against those officers in whose tenures the encroachments had happened.
“Deputy Commissioners and Divisional Commissioners will be held for contempt of court if they do not cooperate with the investigation,” ordered the division bench.
In 2001, the Roshni Act was enacted by the government. The Act was enforced for raising funds for hydropower generation in the state by transferring state land into private ownership to collect Rs 25,000 crore.
A CAG report estimated that against the targeted Rs 25,000 crore, only Rs 76 crore had been realized from the transfer of land into private ownership.
Earlier, Advocate Ankur Sharma had filed a plea before the High Court seeking a CBI probe into the land scam. He had pleaded before the Hon’ble court that under the garb of the Roshni Act, around 20 lakh kanals of state land was illegally sold at peanuts cost.
“Thus, the principle objective of the Act –raising of resources for investment in the power sector was not achieved though the state has lost sizeable lands,” the court had observed previously.
As per reports, of this, the major portion (3,40,091 Kanals) has been categorized as “agricultural” and hence transferred free of cost. Balance is residential use: 6949 Kanals, commercial use: 990 Kanals, and Institutional use: 130 Kanals. In 547 cases covering revenue of 31.53 percent (Rs. 100.12 crores out of Rs. 317.54 crores) of the total transfers approved in the state and 0.19 percent of land i.e. 666 kanals out of 3,48,160 kanals of land, the statutory committees had fixed the price at Rs.325.39 crore at an average rate of Rs.48.46 lakh per kanal (before allowing rebates and incentives). After allowing the discounts over the land price fixed by the statutory committees, the applicants were asked to pay only Rs.100.12 crore. Thus there was a loss of Rs.225.26 crore to the State Exchequer. Further, after the transfer of 3,48,160 kanals under the Act, new encroachments are continuing unabated as the area of public lands under encroachment was 20,46,972 kanals in March 2013 as against 20,64,972 kanals in November 2006.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration had in 2018 repealed the J&K State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001, commonly known as the Roshni scheme
