Irresponsible land survey consumes private lands, indifferent bureaucracy sells it on

IRREGULARITIES IN LAND SURVEY OF 1980’S RECORDED MORE THAN 30 PRIVATE LAND HOLDINGS AS GOVERNMENT LAND, BUREAUCRATIC INERTIA CONTINUES TO STALL RECTIFICATION 

GANGTOK, 08 July: Gross irregularities in the recording of land holdings by State government agencies have come to the fore, but what is even more astounding is the lack of any will on the part of the concerned government agencies to rectify the irregularities even where the mistakes are clear and even admitted. It only follows then that the consequent injustices like lost ownerships or claims to compensation remain unaddressed as well.
Kumar Pradhan pursued his ‘file’ for rectification of his land wrongly recorded as government land with the Land Revenue and Forest Departments, and finally, when nothing came of it, had to seek intervention of the High Court of Sikkim through his advocate, Doma T Bhutia. This step, he was compelled to take, when the State government sold his land to a hydel project developer.
It has surfaced that the State government had wrongly recorded Mr. Pradhan’s private land as government land during the last survey operation carried out in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. That was the last land survey operation in the State and the Land Revenue Department is reported to be preparing for a fresh land survey of the entire state. For the past more than three decades, the private land of Mr. Pradhan has officially been under the government but what has now surfaced is that it is not just his land which was wrongly recorded as government land during the survey but that there are about 30 other similarly affected land owners in the concerned area of East District under the Singtam and Rangpo range.
Till the land remained with the government, Mr. Pradhan and others were content with trying the persuade the agencies to release their lands, but their patience broke when their lands were sold off a few years ago to a hydel project developing company – the Madhya Bharat Power Corporation Limited which is developing the 96 MW Rongnichu HEP in Rorathang, East Sikkim. No compensation was paid to them.
In fact, it is reported that after Mr. Pradhan was made to run from pillar to post to get his lands rightly recorded as his, he was finally told by the Forest Department to visit the regional office of the Ministry of Environment & Forests in Shillong. This was beyond his capacity. Mr. Pradhan has two plots of land which have been sold off to Madhya Bharat, one about 1.28 acres and the other of about an acre.
It has emerged that the State government has admitted that several lands had been wrongly recorded as government’s during the last survey operation and this has also been recorded in the minutes of a meeting held among relevant agencies and departments, including the Forest and Land Revenue departments. While this meeting was held in July 2007, there has been no concrete move to rectify the situation and no steps initiated towards compensating the affected landowners and in the interim, portions of the lands in question sold off to a third party.
Only in 2011 were some inspections conducted of the area to ascertain and verify the claims.
However, now the High Court of Sikkim has taken cognizance of the matter and issued directions to the State government to take a decision on the matter for compensating the affected landowners.