The two months time allotted to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the alleged land grabbing issues in Visakhapatnam is over, but the State government is yet to take a decision on extension of its term.
The GO constituting the SIT was issued on June 20 and the team got down to work on June 28. SIT’s term ended on August 28, and the officials have asked for a two-month extension.
The file is with the government, but it is yet to be finalised. The order is to be inked by the Chief Minister.
Despite the uncertainty, it is business as usual at the SIT office with the officials busy scanning reams of paper, mostly land documents and records.
“We are halfway through and the extension is needed to take the matter to a logical conclusion,” said an officer.
The SIT received about 3,000 complaints and 300 complaints were short-listed for inquiry. The SIT has already got all the details pertaining to 160 of them.
Records missing
During the course of inquiry in the last two months, the SIT officials have been facing difficulty in getting land records from the Revenue Department. Most of the complaints of land-grabbing and encroachment pertain to Visakhapatnam rural areas such as Bheemunipatnam, Anandapuram and Madhurawada, and according to sources, a major chunk of the land records are missing.
Without records, it is difficult to ascertain the ownership and the extent of land in question and the base record is the SFA (settlement fair adangal) survey of 1956.
There are two base records – one is the SFA and the other is the survey conducted by the then District Collector Gilman in 1903. These records specify which is inam land, which is government land, agriculture land and land being enjoyed by the landless poor and landless peasants.
It is learnt that the major chunk of the base records pertaining to the rural areas in the district have gone missing and it is an uphill task for the SIT to construct a case from the available data.
Some of the records are old and the SIT has to go by the Fasli year and the key problem is tracing the retired revenue employees who can throw some light on the land records.
In such a scenario an extension appears to be a must.
