Other States - Rajasthan   

Concern over border land deals

JAIPUR: Transactions reportedly involving the sale of huge tracts of land near the India-Pakistan border in Barmer district of Rajasthan have led to a serious concern among the local residents about the bona fides of purchasers and the purpose of deals finalised through middlemen mostly be people from other States.

The land sold during the past few months includes that adjacent to the zero line and border fencing as well as the area occupied by the Border Security Force (BSF), besides the land forming part of the Desert National Park where no construction activity is permitted.

Perturbed over the transfer of ownership of land – which is mostly barren and desolate – at exorbitant prices in the name of people whose identity in unverified, the Seemant Jagriti Manch has moved a public interest writ petition in the Rajasthan High Court seeking its intervention to safeguard the security of the border area and check if any illegality is being committed.

SJM president Sabal Singh Bhati alleged here on Sunday that the local revenue authorities were performing registry and mutation of land despite the physical absence of land purchasers and without establishing their identity. Those buying land are from as far as Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Bhati said the revenue officers were not taking any punitive action even in the cases of land being sold in the excess of ceiling limits. “A few land owners have complained to the police that their land was sold without their knowledge and despite the stay orders of court,” he said.

To the amazement of local residents, a land plot adjacent to the border fencing at Munabao, where a BSF conference hall is situated, and the land alongside the railway track on which the Jodhpur-Karachi Thar Express runs to connect the two countries, has been sold to unknown people.

The writ petition filed by Mr. Bhati and Ganpat Singh of Tanu village in Barmer district says that the people of the region wanted to know the motive of persons buying the land in view of the threat perceived to the security of the border region.

The villages touching the international border, where these “suspicious transactions” have taken place, are Munabao, Panchla, Tamlor, Amin Ka Par, Akli, Buthia, Mapuri, Sajjan Ka Par and Dedusar. Mr. Bhati said even the land from where Ami Ka Par village was shifted 5 km away during the 1999 Kargil war, had been sold.

A Division Bench of the High Court has issued notices to the State Home Secretary, Revenue Secretary, Jodhpur Divisional Commissioner and others on the writ petition. The case has been listed for hearing at the High Court’s principal seat in Jodhpur on October 30.

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