13 lakh acres of land encroached upon in Karnataka

Encroachments highest in Dakshina Kannada district

A whopping 13,02,241 acres of government land in the State has been encroached upon. Of this, only 1,00,555 acres has been cleared, according to Revenue Minister V. Srinivas Prasad.

Replying to Janata Dal (Secular) member Basavaraj Horatti during Question Hour in the Legislative Council on Wednesday, Mr. Prasad said the State has 62,25,339 acres of government land and around one-fifth has been encroached upon.

According to district-wise data of encroachments furnished by the Minister, Dakshina Kannada district topped the list with encroachment on 1,95,638 acres, followed by Shimoga (1,49,604 acres), Chickmagalur (1,04,280 acres) and Udupi (85,969 acres).

Bangalore Urban district, that comprises Bangalore city, has encroachments on 34,111 acres while the districts surrounding the city, such as Bangalore Rural (14,393 acres), Ramanagaram (74,611 acres) and Chickballapur (79,563 acres) too have substantial extent of encroachments.

The revenue division-wise data shows that Mysore division, comprising eight districts of Mysore, Hassan, Mandya, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Chickmagalur, Kodagu and Chamarajanagar accounts for highest encroachments on 5,78,934 acres. This is followed by Bangalore Division (4,79,446 acres), Gulbarga Division (1,51,604 acres) and Belgaum Division (92,246 acres).

Mr. Prasad said deputy commissioners of the districts were in the process of preparing a time-bound district-level action plan for clearing encroachments in their jurisdictions as per the directive issued by the government.

The Minister said the process of implementation of the recommendations by the A.T. Ramaswamy committee and the Task Force for Recovery of Public Lands, headed by the former bureaucrat V. Balasubramanian was under way. This included formation of a high-level committee headed by the Chief Secretary, district-level committees headed by deputy commissioners, taluk-level committees led by tahsildars and inter-departmental committees comprising Principal Secretaries, to deal sternly with encroachments.