Huge chunks of land freed in J&K encroachment drive 

SRINAGAR:  In the ongoing anti-encroachment drive to regain the government land, opposing the Roshni Act, the state has retrieved 15.83 lakh kanals of land in Jammu and Kashmir in three months. In the recently released J&K Economic survey, the Lt Governor administration gad revealed that 22.40 lakh kanal of government land was under encroachment. 

It disclosed that during the ongoing anti-encroachment drive, which was launched in the first week of January this year across the UT, 15.83 lakhs kanals of land has been retrieved from encroachers so far. “The land regained is 71 per cent of the total encroached land in the UT,” the government stated, adding most of the encroached land was retrieved from influential persons.

The land has been recovered  from former ministers, ex legislators and serving and retired bureaucrats. J&K Lt Governor Manoj Sinha had recently said the drive to recover the government land will continue. “Let me make it clear that we will take back all state land. The state land is government’s property and it must remain with the government,” Sinha had said. 

The retrieved land would be used to fuel industrial revolution in J&K, he added. A top official said that the anti-encroachment drive was not stopped or halted at any point of time and is going on. “The drive is being carried out on directions of the Court. It is going on a systematic manner,” he said. In October 2020, J&K High Court had declared the 2001 Roshni Act unconstitutional and unsustainable, which gave ownership 
rights to the unauthorised occupants of state land against payment of a premium.