Another land grabbing case emerges in Gurugram, CM's Office orders enquiry
Gurugram: Having witnessed a large scale real estate development, encroachment of government land for the private use is not a new phenomenon in Millennium City Gurugram as certain reports have found that there is also a deep nexus between the officials and the builders. Now, in a new land grabbing case, it has emerged that large tracts of Panchayat land in Sikanderpur village along the prime land of MG road is being used for private purposes.
Facing a major loss, the Chief Minister's Office has directed the district administration to order a probe into the matter. It is important to note that the state authorities are already embroiled in various legal cases over the encroachments that have taken place in the green belt of Aravallis around the area.
The authorities in the past took action against officials that registered the land without proper registrations following the rise in the number of illegal colonies, landholdings and commercial establishments in Gurugram.
Allegations have also been leveled against senior officials in the past for changing the land use pattern for profit. Most of the builder mafia have been successful in selling plots in the illegal colonies because of the irregularities in land registrations and thus earning huge profits.
Highlighting irregularities in land registrations, Gurugram MLA Umesh Aggarwal in December last year had hit out at former DC TL Satyaprakash for failing to prevent losses to the state exchequer. The ambiguities in the law have allowed the encroachers to target the green belt area of Aravallis.
Presently, the Gurugram Forest Division is involved in over 30 cases over the Aravallis in the state. The cases range from encroachments, forest act violations and changing of land use patterns in the area to favour building activities in the green belt area. The legal cases over Aravallis are being fought in the District courts of Gurugram, Punjab and Haryana High Court, National Green Tribunal (NGT) and also in the Supreme Court.
Based on the documents shared, most of the encroachment cases are against private builders who took up project in the green belt of Aravallis. Cases have also been filed by petitioners on the issue of violation of forest acts and felling of the trees in the Aravallis. As many as 12 cases are filed in the National Green Tribunal on Aravallis situated in the Gurugram belt.
Most of the cases filed with the NGT are regarding the violation of environmental norms, encroachments, and change of land use pattern by the government.
