BENGALURU: Applicants as young as eight years old were among those who have been granted land for cultivation, a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report noted, highlighting discrepancies in terms of encroachment and unauthorised occupation of government land. In some cases, agricultural land was allotted in absence of any application, or it was granted in a village or survey number different from the one applied for.
Such incidents, experts said, were either due to the connivance of officials or inadvertent errors in the Revenue Department’s database. The report, ‘Grant, Lease, Eviction of Encroachment and Regularisation of Unauthorised Occupation of Government Lands,’ has identified several shortcomings in granting of agricultural land to beneficiaries.
“Non-compliances like grant of excess land, grant of Gomala land (where shortage was reported), grant to ineligible beneficiaries, grant of land without applications, etc. were noticed,” the report said. Audit analysis of the date of birth on the applications (for agricultural land) revealed the applicants’ age to be even between 8 and 17 years. “Such unrealistic applications should have been rendered invalid but were accepted,” the report noted. As a result, 1,055 acre and 19 gunta was alienated for regularisation “contrary to the eligibility conditions/provisions of the scheme/Act/Rules”, it said.
‘Human errors may have led to discrepancies’
In another case of encroachment reported in Ramanagara district, the government granted 77 acres of land in violation of the rules and “misconstruing the Court direction as direction of grant.”The land was valued at around Rs 982 crore and Revenue Department had issued a notice for collection of the amount in 2016. However, no further action was taken by the government and the land remained under the illegal occupation of the encroacher, the report noted.
When contacted, retired IAS officer Ramegowda questioned how a minor could be granted land when he was not in a state to cultivate the land. “Government officials are custodians of government land. Such
discrepancies cannot occur without the knowledge of officials and they are likely involved in the said cases,” he said.
However, sources in the Revenue Department said that several of the cases highlighted in the report were due to ‘human errors’ that have now been identified and will be rectified soon. Since there are a lot of disputes related to land and due to a shortage of staff in the Department, such errors might have cropped up at the grama panchayat or taluk level. Steps will be taken to implement the recommendations of the CAG report and to reclaim the government lands, the source added.