Top netas under scanner as J&K HC orders CBI probe into ‘land usurpation’

New Delhi: A number of politicians, government officials, police officers and businessmen are likely to come under the scanner of the Central Bureau of Investigation for allegedly conniving to usurp public land worth Rs 25,000 crore in Jammu and Kashmir.

Describing the damage done by the culprits as “shameless sacrilege” and “damage to national interest”, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has ordered the CBI to probe what may emerge as J&K’s biggest land scandal.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal asked the CBI director to appoint “teams of officers not below the ranks of superintendents of police” to conduct an “in depth inquiry” and register cases.


The order was passed on Friday, but a copy of it was made available only on Sunday.

The high court has declared the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001, famously known as the “Roshni Act”, as void ab initio.

The high court has “prima facie found culpability of government officials at the highest level enabling encroachment of public lands and permitting their illegal vesting in the hands of private owners”. It ordered the CBI to “investigate their culpability”.

The Act came into force in 2001 under the then Farooq Abdullah-led government. All the land illegally handed over to “encroachers” by successive state governments till now shall be restored to the state government, the court said.

Lambasting the state authorities, the court said: “The bureaucracy and government officials are enjoying huge salaries and benefits for their acts of omission and commission each of which tantamount to a penal offence and have thus actively encouraged usurpations of public lands.”

According to it, “Those in power, authority and the respondents have completely failed to discharge their constitutional functions, their statutory duties and public law obligations towards the public to whom they owe their very existence”.

We have not come across any such legislative action legitimising criminal activity at the cost of national interest with incalculable loss and damage to the public exchequer

-Chief Justice Gita Mittal

Expressing shock at the conception of the Roshni Act and "illegal" amendments made to it by successive governments, the court said: “Government officials had the gumption and absolute arrogance to publish rules which did not have the clearance of the legislature speaks volumes about the influence of the beneficiaries thereof.”

The high court has observed that it apprehended that the revenue authorities had “commenced a huge cover up exercise now” in a bid to “protect” the violators.

Comparing the land under illegal occupation in Jammu as opposed to Kashmir, the court said: “A perusal of the information disclosed would show that though the extent of state land which was under illegal occupation of persons in districts in the Kashmir province runs into thousands and thousands of kanals (for instance, to the extent of 1,14,135 kanals in district Baramulla), the extent of land which has been regularised under the Roshni Act is proportionately of a very small area. The disclosure in respect of Jammu is to the contrary”.