Bangalore/Belgaum: The Turahalli forest land issue exposed by the CNN-IBN television channel in a sting operation caused a major furore on Wednesday in both Houses of the Karnataka Legislature at the special session in Belgaum.

Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, however, maintained that the land in question belonged to the Government and was not reserve forest land.

Authorities failed to act

Independent enquiries by The Hindu revealed that although the Forest Department, the police and the local Revenue Department authorities knew about the massive fabrication of ownership and sale deeds by four persons pertaining to the Turahalli Reserve Forest area, no action was taken.

The extent of land involved is 343.8 acres, coming under Survey Number 5 of Uttarahalli Manvarthekaval.

A police complaint was filed with the Talaghattapura Police Station, Bangalore Rural district, on June 22, 2006, by Range Forest Officer (RFO) Chinnappaiah against B. Chandrashekar, V. Mohan Kumar, Narasimhamurthy and A.T. Krishnamurthy over the alleged fabrication of documents.

Land `sold'

On the strength of the documents, the forest land was "sold" to S. Raja Narendra, a land developer from Hyderabad, on May 7, 2004, according to Annaiah, Deputy Conservator of Forests, Bangalore Urban Division. "As of now, there is no physical encroachment of the forest land. We alerted the Director-General of Police in March 2006 that a few gullible land developers were being cheated by a few elements," he told The Hindu .

Mr. Annaiah said the earlier RFO submitted a detailed report in this regard to the Forest Department in October 2004.

The RFO alerted the Deputy Commissioner and tahsildar of the area and urged them not to create any records on the land.

He said the encroachment of 343.8 acres of forest land was only "on paper" as those who claim ownership of it had never physically occupied it.

SP `unaware'

When contacted, the Superintendent of Police, Bangalore Rural, K. Srinivasa, said he was not aware of any complaint filed in Talaghattapura Police Station with regard to fabrication of records.

In Belgaum, A.T. Ramaswamy, chairman of the Joint Select Committee of the Legislature on Encroachment of Government Lands, told The Hindu that he would call for the records of the Turahalli Forest.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who is in Belgaum for the special legislature session, said this would be his first task on returning to Bangalore.

"There are chances that these records were fudged with the active cooperation of Forest and Revenue officials, although I am not aware of encroachments in this neck of the woods," he said.

The fact that many of the "victims," who paid lakhs of rupees for land that could not be purchased, were from outside the State indicates that there was intent to mislead people, he said.

Panel begins probe

The 19-member legislature committee, which was set up in June 2006, has stumbled upon encroachment of 750 acres of reserve forest land in the Bannerghatta National Park, apart from nearly a dozen cases of encroachments of tanks and water bodies by real-estate developers.

The committee has started investigating the role played by the Revenue and Forest departments, and other agencies, such as the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, the civic authorities and the panchayats.

`Not forest land'

The Chief Minister told the Legislative Assembly that the "revelations" made by the television channel were baseless. The land located at Turahalli was not a reserve forest as claimed by the channel. The land belonged to the Government and a decision had been taken to grant 300 acres of this land to the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike for waste management. "There is no scam and the land belongs to the Government," he said.

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