Govt report confirms massive land scam by City Survey officers

Govt report confirms massive land scam by City Survey officers

                                                                                                  

CONFIRMING the public perception about rampant corruption in city survey office and massive irregularities in maintaining and changing property title records. Principal Revenue Secretary S S Sandhu on Wednesday informed the High Court in his report that out of 742 cases scrutinised by committee headed by him. blatant irregularities were detected in 713 cases.

The Revenue Secretary further slated after examining appeal cases, the committee found that in 42 cases officers had committed irregularities in the matter of boundary correction in the areas. Nagpur. Ambazari. Lendhra. Zingabai Takli. Sitabuldi. Ajni etc. These officers have also submitted faulty reports and committed negligence and hence diey are liable for action under the 1979 Rules.

The report virtually exposed the hung lings in City Survey officers and how the rules were tweaked and twisted to favour realtors.

In appeal registration book. instead of registering appeals, around 144 cases were decided by resorting to correspondence, which is against the rules. Under Section 232 of the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, instead of deciding the appeals. 136 cases were decided by City Survey authorities. In 133 cases, die authorilies passed orders under Section 255(3)of the MLR Codcand directed action under Section 258(1) of the Code. Total 248 cases were decided under Section 255(3) of the MLR Code while in 10 cases action under Section 20(2) was ordered.

In his report submitted to the High Court, in compliance with its direction of April 2. inthepub-lic interest litigation (PIL) filed by Visual Khandckar regarding massive corruption in land measurement to help the builders and developers.        State's Principal Revenue Secretary S S Sandhu has informed the Court that after scrutinising his report, the Government has fixed responsibility on four City Survey officers - S C Suryavanshi. P B Jagtap, K S I kitekar and R B Fadtare and proposed joint disciplinary action against them under Rule 8 and 12 of the Maharashtra Civil Services (Discipline and  Appeal)  Rules, 1979. He has also clarified that if con-cerncd officers are found guilty after the formal Departmental Inquiry, they will be punished as per Rule 5 of the 1979 Rules.

The committee headed by Sandhu also had Deputy Director of Land Records A S Gircgosawi. Manohar Pedgaonkar and Vilas Gaikwad and it examined the record from April 28 to May 6 and all decisions taken by S C Suryawanshi from September 7, 2010 to Juny 3. 2013 and submitted report on August 1.

According to petitioner, then Deputy Director DadasahebTadjxr, who filed the initial affidavit and conducted probe, himself was involved in many cases of irregularities and later arrested by Ami Corruption Bureau (ACB).

According to petitioner. Tadpe and his subordinates altered plot boundaries of Ambazari layout, Zingabai Takli. Sitabuldi. Jaitala. Khamla. Ajni. Chinchbhuvan, Katol and helped the realtors to regularise and gobble the plots. Suryawanshi was charged with usurping    powers   of   District Collector and after the PIL was filed, the Government promised stern action against him.

Justice Vasanti Naik and Justice P R Bora have indicated further consideration of this report in the PIL on September 24 next.

Advocate Shrikant Khandalkar appeared for the petitioner. Government Pleader Bharati Dangre represented authorities. 

Posted in: News 2014