Once a land gets encroached, DDA’s hands are tied

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the prime land owning agency in the national Capital, that acquires land for various developmental projects is in a fix. According to an RTI reply, out of 2,658 acre of agricultural land the DDA has acquired in Delhi, 1,048 acre has been encroached upon by various unauthorised colonies incurring huge loss to the public exchequer.

“The authority cannot dismantle or raze any of these illegal structures as the Central government, in 2006, through NCT of Delhi Special Provision Act, regularised all the locations. However, as per authorities, these colonies did not pay any amount for the land. But the DDA already paid the compensation of the land to the farmers. Due to occupation of these lands, designated projects could not be implemented” said a senior DDA official.

In addition to this there is 450 acre of acquired land in North, East and West zones of the DDA which is lying vacant. The value of this amount of land as per market price comes to around Rs 238 crore which is lying vacant in Delhi. The authority in order to stop anymore of its land being taken over by land mafias has a minuscule number of 20 security guards per zone in Delhi. “The major reason of these encroachments is the migrant population coming to Delhi for decades. They start with small encroachments then big mafias take over the land and start developing on that. We raze the ones that have come up recently but in cases of old encroachments we have no authority to touch them, our hands are tied” the official said.

As per market sources, the current value of land in Delhi is Rs 53 lakhs per acre, according to this the current value of 1,048 acres of encroached land comes to Rs 5,554 crores. “This happened due to the inaction of the authority. They are emptying pockets of the public both ways. The DDA keeps on acquiring more and more agricultural land but what about the one that has been encroached upon? Farmers are dying every day in the country, if this is the state of the Capital then what about the rest of the country,” said Ramesh Kumar Mumukshu, RTI activist, who filed the request.

In order to acquire any land, the DDA sends out a notification two years prior to the acquisition and no activity is permitted in the area identified as developmental area except farming.

“As the date of acquisition keeps coming closer, the farmer many a times starts putting up some concrete structure to demand higher prices. They want the market price of the land which is higher than the government quoted price. If we take the plots down, the owner takes a stay from the court on the land, claiming that the person has been living in this land for decades. The process gets stuck for ages and when you return to the place there are 100 people living on that piece of land, then we have no option but to leave it at that, informed an officer in the DDA,” added the official.