As reported in October 2020, the Roshni case resulting a loss of Rs 25,000 crore to the J&K treasury, is the biggest ever land scam in the history of Jammu and Kashmir. the scam involves top politicians and bureaucrats mishing law to corner valuable properties and land being given at throwaway prices at just 20 per cent of market rate. As a result, the division Bench, led by Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal asked the CBI to file a status report every eight weeks.
Roshni Act
The J&K State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001, is commonly known as the Roshni scheme, which proposed that the ownership rights of state land could be transferred to illegal encroachers upon the payment of a sum to be determined by the Jammu & Kashmir government. The law was enacted by the then J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah’s government in 2001, which came into effect in March 2002 and set 1990 as the cut-off for encroachment on state land. The government wanted the funds raised to finance power projects in the state, thus, the name ‘Roshni’.
The government could generate Rs 25,000 crore by transferring almost 21 lakh kanals of state land to illegal occupants (one acre is equal to 8 kanals). In 2005, when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-Congress came to power in the state, the the cut-off was relaxed to 2004. Thereafter, when Ghulam Nabi Azad replaced Mufti chief minister, the cut-off was further relaxed to 2007. Meanwhile, the J&K government also gave ownership of agricultural land to farmers occupying it for almost free by charging only Rs 100 per kanal as ‘documentation fee’.
Who are under the Scanner?
As per Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), the beneficiary list of the controversial Roshni Act reads ‘like a who’s who of the powerful and influential among the local society’. The list also includes Mehboob Beg (son of Mirza Afzal Beg, a close associate of late Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah), influential businessmen like Mushtaq Ahmad Chaya and Krishen Amla (who is close to the top leaders of the Congress party) and former top bureaucrats, such as Khurshid Ahmad Ganai and Tanveer Jahan.
As for the Congress party, it owns one of the costliest pieces of real estate in the heart of Srinagar city under the name of the ‘Khidmat Trust’ whose ownership was transferred to the trustee under the Act. The National Conference headquarters in Srinagar and Jammu city too have been built on state land, transferred through controversial allotment made under the Roshni Act.
Repealing of the Roshni Act
The State Administrative Council (SAC), headed by J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik, repealed the Roshni Act in 2018 as it ‘failed to realise the desired objectives and there were reports of misuse of some of its provisions’. Initially, repealing the Act meant that only the pending applications, seeking ownership rights for encroachers to state lands, would be cancelled and cases where property rights had already been transferred, will hold. However, the High Court order termed the Act illegal, unjustified, unconstitutional, and adverse to the rights guaranteed to the people under the Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India; and therefore, held it to be void right from its inception. And thus, all land allotments were cancelled.
Courtesy: news.yahoo