Why no action against govt officials involved in multiple land scams: Adv Carlos asks
PANAJI: Aldona Congress MLA Adv Carlos Alvares Ferreira on Wednesday called out the government for failing to take action against those officials within various departments who have been found involved in land scams pointing out that such laxity was only promoting and encouraging such scams.
“The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has booked cases where officials have made parties. What have you done about those officers where officials have been found prima facie guilty in multiple cases?,” Adv Ferreira asked.
He said that every week and nearly every day stories of land scams are being reported with people filing cases of land grabs.
“They don’t happen just with private parties; they are happening with the government officials — the mamlatdar, the deputy collectors and staff of these offices. They are officials who specially sit there to see which properties are available to get the land records and to start giving these land records to people and to try to sell these lands to other people,” he said.
“Comunidade lands being sold fraudulently. The same group of people who are specialising in grabbing the lands of the comunidades by first claiming that they are tenants of the comunidades, then doing settlement with the comunidade. Recently the Supreme Court dismissed the claim of the Tivim comunidade which was doing some 60:40 which according to my view was a fraud. If you are a tenant, you are a tenant nothing more. The law has given you protection, you enjoy it as a tenant,” he said.
He called on the government, especially the Revenue Department, to put in place a system similar to one in place when registering sale deeds of recording biometrics.
“When you register a sale deed you take biometrics. But when it comes to mutation, there is no such thing. Someone files an application, they give one address, to whom the notice goes, no one knows and the mutation is done. It is not your fault it is the system’s fault. Frauds take place this way. People come back and find their properties occupied and someone comes and stays in the property,” he said.
“Whenever you are doing an application for mutation or for partition in land revenue records ask them for records, ask for aadhaar details so that you know where you can. Let any notice which is being served if it comes back unserved, you should ask for publication in the newspaper and also in the panchayat office where the mutation is being done and in the notice board of the deputy collector and mamlatdar it should be pasted,” he said.
“This gives a wider coverage, people can come forward and help. There should be a verification system by a superior. people are absent, you have a system of verification by a superior officer that procedural requirements are complied and 80% of frauds taking will be minimised,” he said.
“Someone who comes from outside in flashy vehicles and a lot of money, overnight he gets mutation and partition,” he also said, adding that poor Goans had to face years of waiting for their mutations to be done.
Adv Carlos also said that the Disaster Management Authorities should be given the power to cut dangerous trees before they call.
“I was told that the firebrigade can cut trees only when they have fallen down and not when they are standing still. If a tree is dangerous it needs to be cut,” Adv Carlos said.
He also called on the government to put a flying squad in place at the taluka headquarters in order to improve response times.
“There is rampant hill cutting going on, rampant deforestation, rampant land filling and this happens sometimes on the weekends or sometimes late in the evening or in the night. You don’t get through to the helpline. By the time the team (the flying squad) can assemble they are all gone. When these shady things happen, why don’t you set up teams at headquarters of the taluka. Instead of centralising everything at Panjim. It will be faster and more prompt. Plus they know the locality,” he said.
“Hill cutting which took place in Ecoxim. Now Assagao is being done. People of Ecoxim had to go to court to stop the work. Have a system by which you keep logs of all calls received,” Adv Ferreira said.
Speaking on the issue of regularisation of illegal structures, Adv Carlos questioned why the government didn’t ensure that people could benefit from past laws which were brought to regularise illegal structures.
“Manohar Parrikar had brought a law in 2001 to regularise constructions on comunidade lands. Less than 10 got regularised. Why did it not happen, why did it not go ahead?
If you were to do it at that time a lot of people would have been very happy. I don’t know why the system stopped,” he said.
Speaking of comunidades he allege that the office and records of the North Goa comunidades are in shambles. “There is no proper indexing and the building itself requires an overhaul. We need to preserve those records because many of those records. We need to digitalise these records and make them available online because again, either they are made to disappear or the pages may disappear,” he said.
He also raised the question of construction people are just dumping on the roadsides which he said was a nuisance, the schemes for the labour class and ensuring that vocational training was in tune with industrial needs.
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