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Kathmandu Friday December 21, 2001 Paush 06, 2058.
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A step forward
The government has come up with a bold
decision to sell back encroached land to the encroachers themselves as a way of tackling
the problem of encroachment for good. The decision will cover some 1,859 ropani of land in
Kathmandu metropolis. With the land involved valued at betweens Rs 500,000 to Rs 12
million a ropani depending on the location, the sell back scheme should bring in billions
of rupees into public coffers. As transactions in such land has been frozen pending
clarification of their status under the law the sell back scheme will also clear up a lot
of entanglements occasioned by people hanging on to encroached land to which they have now
acquired an attachment through usage if not through the law. Such land will now be freed
up for transaction. Sometimes entire land holdings have been frozen up just because a
fraction of the holdings comes under the encroached category. This problem too will be
tackled. If a buy back deal does not materialize in a particular case the land in question
will be auctioned off. Encroached lands that belong to temples and courtyards of
historical significance will not be put under the hammer. Rather, they will be restored to
rightful ownership. Much of such land belongs to guthi trusts and encroachment on them has
impacted adversely on
the functioning of the guthis themselves. The whole problem of encroached land stems
partly from flaws in the workings of land survey officials and partly from the
government’s failure to bring to book those found encroaching on land that is not
theirs.
Land being the sensitive subject that it is in
this country, any movement towards its better management is always welcome. Stories abound
of how guthi land is gobbled up by the unscrupulous and of how the Pashupatinath guthi for
instance has seen thousands of bighas of its land simply vanish into thin air. It is guthi
land that has helped perpetuate the religious and cultural life of this country. Before
hydropower became a developmental buzzword land was everything in this hard scrabble
nation. Land related litigation made up the bulk of the case load at any court of law. It
is only after dependence on land declines that industrial development can get under way.
It is said that the industrial revolution in England came about only an agricultural
revolution. Seen within this broad historical context, any progress in land related
questions takes on significance. Land in Nepal is a fraught issue as was discovered by
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba when he came up with a progressive land reform package
recently. But nibbling away at the problems involved may also be an effective way of
tackling the whole problem in course of time. |
