‘5% of government land under illegal occupation’

Legislation to be enacted to cancel fake registrations

Claiming that almost 5% of the government land in Tamil Nadu is under illegal occupation, Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Tuesday told the Assembly that a bill will be introduced to reclaim them and cancel fake registrations. Besides, the proposed law would provide for taking retrospective action against those who had registered documents illegally.

Responding to the issue of illegal registration of government land raised by legislator ‘Panruti’ T. Velmurugan, Mr. Rajan said the government had two plans to reclaim the lands. One was to develop a GPS-linked land management system with a database for the better understanding of all government departments.

The other was to introduce a bill that would pave the way for correction of documents at the level of the Inspector General of Registration and take retrospective action against those who were involved in the illegal registration.

P. Moorthy, Minister for Commercial Taxes and Registration, said since sub-registrars did not have the power to correct fake registrations, a bill would be introduced to bestow power on the Inspector General of Registration to cancel those registrations.

Retrospective effect

“Accordingly, all such registrations would be cancelled with retrospective effect,” he said.

Mr. Rajan said even land leased out during the British period were not reclaimed after the expiry of the lease term.

“As per the CAG report, 2.05 lakh hectares of government land is in the hands of encroachers. I would like to share another detail. Almost 5% of government land has been encroached. In Chennai alone, 23% of land is under illegal occupation,” he said.