The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : A case of public land in private hands

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 07, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

A case of public land in private hands

Karthik Subramanian

Ownership changed illegally over decades by leaseholders Ownership changed illegally by leaseholders

CHENNAI: Five decades ago, Madras Corporation used to lease its land to private parties. The rent was nominal in most cases as the civic agency was offering the land for social causes.

But today most of the land have either changed ownership illegally or continue to be occupied by the descendants of the original leaseholders in contravention of the guidelines set by the civic agency. Business establishments and multi-storeyed apartments have come up on the properties earning the occupants crores of rupees even as the Corporation struggles to regain its possessions.

Under dispute

The civic agency's Land and Estates department, the guardian of the civic agency's land records, has over the past two years drawn an exhaustive list of lands occupied by private parties.

At least 25 major cases have been brought to light and the civic agency has initiated legal action to regain them.

Some of the lands under dispute are situated in prime commercial zones in city, including T. Nagar, Koyambedu, Shenoy Nagar and Wall Tax Road.

In one such case, the civic agency is locked in battle with a reputed building firm over three-grounds in T.Nagar. According to the Corporation, the land under litigation was sold by the civic agency to the Indian Fine Arts Society in 1940s under the condition that the society sell back the land to the Corporation if it ceased to function from there. However the building firm is claiming rights over the land, saying it had bought the land from the fine arts society.

In another case, the Corporation had leased out a portion of its land on Wall Tax Road to a drama theatre (`drama kottai' in Tamil) for a one-year-period four decades ago. When the civic agency tried to regain ownership of the land, descendants of the leaseholder moved the Madras High Court claiming ownership.

At Shenoy Nagar, a 3,600 sq.ft. spread of land near Sri Sai Baba temple is facing a similar legal dispute. According to Chennai Corporation records, the land was leased to a voluntary organisation 30 years ago but has since changed hands. A private party is now claiming ownership.

In a highly publicised case in 2003, the civic agency sealed a multi-storeyed building on Basin Bridge Road in an attempt to take possession of the land, saying that that the leaseholder had no rights to construct the building. However the leaseholder obtained an interim order against the Corporation; the case is still pending in court.

Modus operandi

How the private parties could have occupied the Corporation land without any intervention for several decades is a question nobody wants to answer.

Corporation insiders note that in most cases the private parties have been able to produce land documents in court. The authenticity of these documents is the subject of many disputes, they added.

In some of the cases, the occupants of the lands have used innovative means to get the land documents in their name. ``In one case, two private parties approached the tahsildar for the same piece of land claiming it to be a case of land dispute. Eventually, one of them got the tahsildar's orders stating that the land belonged to him.''

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