The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday directed the Karnataka Public Land Corporation (KPLC) to submit by October 15 data on the progress made in recovery of encroached public lands across the State.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice Ashok B. Hinchigeri also asked KPLC to computerise all the data related to encroached land as well as that which has been recovered.
The Bench issued the directions during the hearing of a PIL petition that brought to the court’s notice the failure of the State in recovering encroached lands even after identification of such lands in two reports – one given by a joint legislature committee and another by a task force against land encroachment.
Meanwhile, the government on Thursday told the Bench that around 10,000 acres of lands were freed from encroachment since August 27, when the Bench heard the petition on the last occasion.
Collate dataIt was during the last hearing that the government had assured the court that more than one lakh acres of the total encroached public lands would be recovered within the next six months.
The KPLC will have to collate the data after receiving regular progress reports from the district level task force headed by the respective deputy commissioners.
The State government is aiming at recovering around 4,54,704 acres of revenue land, which is part of the total 11 lakh public land under encroachment across the State.
However, the government is not planning to recover the remaining 7.54 lakh as it is considering regularisation of unauthorised occupants under Section 94A and 94B of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964.
Issue of notice ordered
In another case, the Bench ordered issue of notice to the State on a PIL petition, which has questioned the decision of not supplying kerosene from this month to those BPL card holders who fail to submit voter ID card or Aadhaar number to the Food and Civil Supplies Department.
In its petition, Dalitha Sangharsha Samithi and others have questioned the orders issued in this regard by the Department last month while complaining that the decision of the government would adversely impact a large number of BPL card holders living in rural areas who use kerosene for cooking, particularly during rainy reason.
