Delhi starts reclaiming illegally sold Asola land

A large British-era canvass map, the only physical representation of how land in Asola is distributed that was stored in the sub-divisional magistrate’s office in Saket, was slashed as part of the conspiracy.

The state government has started a massive reclamation drive in south Delhi’s Asola village, where illegal sale of prime gram sabha plots by the land mafia was rampant, senior government officials said.

A view of the Delhi government’s land at Asola farms in Chattarpur on November 24, 2017. (Ravi Choudhary/HT PHOTO)

The drive comes after Hindustan Times had reported last November that 13 government plots, worth over R600 crore and measuring a total of 120 bighas (about 30 acres), had been fraudulently grabbed by private individuals in collusion with local government officials. At least three of these properties in Asola village were then sold at less than one-twentieth of their market rates by people who had no rights over them.

A large British-era canvass map, the only physical representation of how land in Asola is distributed that was stored in the sub-divisional magistrate’s office in Saket, was slashed as part of the conspiracy.

Following the report, the south district administration started mapping all gram sabha land under its jurisdiction. “About 220 bighas of land has been identified. The whole of December, we prepared maps for each of these plots and now the process is complete,” said Amjad Tak, district magistrate (south).

While doing this, the district administration discovered that another 28 bighas had been encroached upon by the followers of a spiritual group. This plot has now been reclaimed by the Delhi government and has been allotted to the education department to build a school, according to a report filed by the south district administration to Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal and revenue minister Kailash Gahlot.

“The work of rectifying the canvass map (Sizra) is almost finalised. After completing this work, it would be of great help in getting a clear picture on encroachment in Asola village,” the report says.

Tak said that the process of taking possession of the rest of the land, including the plots that HT had written about, would begin after Republic Day.

“There are only those 13 cases where land was transferred by fudging government records. All other cases are primarily that of encroachment,” he said.

The scam was discovered when the government’s annual survey of property in 2016 revealed that plot (Khasra) number 1354 — a 2-acre land in Asola worth over Rs 40 crore — was transferred and sold for just Rs 2 crore the previous year.

The Khatauni (the government record showing the land’s original owner) of the plot showed the land was transferred to one Mahesh under court order 144/RA/85 in December 1986. When officials checked the records, Mahesh was mentioned as the owner only since April 2015. The records prior to 2015 showed that the land belonged to the gram sabha.

The government gave the people mentioned in the records a chance to show proof of ownership, but no come forward, officials said.

How the fraud was done