Pointing out illegality in acquisition of sites to form a burial ground, the Karnataka High Court has directed the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to restore to the owners some of the acquired sites at Jalahalli by demarcating land already used for burying around 60 dead bodies, or allot alternate sites or pay their market value as compensation.
The alternate sites should be in a equally developed area having similar potentiality and value as that of their acquired sites or they shall be paid compensation determining the market value at today’s market rate, the court said.
Justice B.S. Patil passed the order recently on petitions filed by William Mascarenhas and others. The petitioners had claimed that the BBMP, without notifying them, had acquired their sites, situated in a residential zone in the midst of a developed residential locality at Jalahallii during 2010-14 even though the proposal to acquire these lands, prior to their conversion for non-agricultural use, for a burial ground was dropped way back in 1988.
Apart from pointing out that BBMP had not followed many crucial and mandatory procedures in the acquisition process, the court said that there was nothing in the acquisition notification to make the petitioners aware that their sites were proposed to be acquired.
Noticing that these lands having ceased to be a revenue land due to conversion were no longer assessed for land revenue, the court found that the BBMP notified the lands by wrongly showing them as agricultural land by its survey number, which was no longer in existence.
Despite the BBMP getting possession of documents of these sites from the erstwhile Dasarahalli city municipal council, the authorities failed to notify the owners of these sites as no particulars like site numbers, their measurement, names of respective owners were published in the acquisition notifications, the court said.
