BANGLADESH NEWS
A considerable portion of 3,602 acres of land owned by government's relief and rehabilitation department in four upazilas of the district has gone into the hands of illegal occupiers due to lack of proper monitoring.
The then Pakistan government purchased the lands (through requisition) during 1947-1952 for sheltering people who migrated from India in the face of communal riots there.
Of the lands, 3,031.83 acres are in Dimla upazila, 543.10 acres in Sadar upazila, 22.50 acres in Jaldhaka upazila, and 4.41 acres in Saidpur upazila, said sources of the department concerned.
"A good number of Indian refugees were sheltered in small portions of those lands but most of it remained unutilised till independence of Bangladesh," said Aftabuddin Ahmed, upazila chairman of Dimla.
"After 1971, a section of unscrupulous people gradually encroached upon those lands and started handing over the 'possession' to others in exchange of money. For this, buyers and sellers usually make unregistered deeds on government stamps, which have no legal value," he informed.
A number of people in collusion with a section of dishonest land officials even made false land ownership documents and sold those lands through registration in local upazila land registry offices.
During the last land survey, some people allegedly got large areas of the government lands recorded as private property through bribing a section of land officials but no action was taken although several written allegations were submitted to the higher authorities in this regard.
Project implementation officers (PIO) of the upazilas concerned are responsible for looking after the lands under the government's relief department.
But they remain busy mostly in implementing different government projects and due to manpower shortage, they have very little capacity to do anything about the lands, sources said.
Several attempts by the district administration to recover the occupied lands saw little results due to various reasons while a section of local political leaders back the illegal occupiers.
Authorities during the last caretaker government in 2007-2008 took a few drastic steps to recover the encroached lands but the initiative discontinued later.
According to the present market value, the price of the 3,602 acres of government land would be at least Tk 500 crore, land department sources said.
Sadar upazila vice chairman Shahid Mahmud suggested that the government fix up the value of those lands and realise it from the occupiers to hand it over to them through deeds.
District Relief and Rehabilitation Officer (DRRO) Abdul Mottalib Mollah told this correspondent that a seven-member committee has been formed with the ADC (Revenue) as president and the DRRO as member secretary to recover the occupied lands.
As per direction of the ministry concerned, the committee, which is obliged to hold a meeting every month, is collecting all the particulars of every plot of land belonging to the relief department and recording them in registers to take further course of action, he added.
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