Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has sought a report from the Revenue Department on the purchase of 8.3 acres of land in Bengaluru Urban district by Ms Tarabai Maruthirao Jadhav, mother of Chief Secretary Arvind Jadhav, who is facing charges of alleged 'misuse' of his office to get his work done in the Revenue Department.
Sources said that the delay in expediting Mr Jadhav’s work led to the unceremonious transfer of the then Commissioner of Survey and Settlement of Land Records (SSLR), Mr Munish Moudgil, who fought for the protection of government land.
Revenue Department sources told Deccan Chronicle that Ms Tarabai reportedly purchased 8.3 acres of the grant land and got it registered in her name in 2003.
According to the Karnataka State Land Revenue Act, 'grant land' (one of the several categories of land which are allotted to the landless by the government to carry out agricultural activities) cannot be sold within 15 years.
The process of issuing an RTC for the said land at Ramanayakanahalli village, Sarjapur hobli in Anekal taluk of Bengaluru Urban district, reportedly started after Mr Jadhav became the chief secretary in January this year, raising the suspicion.
Following “instructions” from the top officer, the deputy commissioner of Bengaluru Urban issued special orders on January 14, 2016 to issue RTC in favour of Ms Tarabai.
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The DC is vested with special powers to arrange for the issue of RTC. But it was found that the grant file was missing and the deputy commissioner, through his orders, recreated the missing file in April, it is alleged. As per the Karnataka Land Records Act, to issue an RTC for a particular survey number, all claimants have to complete all formalities laid down under the KLR Act.
Subsequently, the tahsildar of Anekal reportedly renamed the Survey No 29 as 29/1 after amalgamation of land and tried to allot 73 acres of the government land to around 40 people, leaving just eight acres to the government.
However, the software failed to accept the renamed Survey No. 29/1. Officers from the Department of Survey, who went to survey and map the land, returned saying that they were unable to do it since the original survey number had been changed.
This amounts to an illegal act, as no one is allowed to change the survey number of a piece of revenue land without the approval of a competent authority. That was the reason officials of the Survey and Settlement of Land Records refused to issue the RTC (Rights, Tenancy and Crops) on the ground that the original survey number had been meddled with.
In the meantime, Mr Jadhav allegedly put pressure on the revenue authorities to issue the RTC expeditiously. He learnt that the case was pending before the SSLR commissioner and allegedly asked him to speed up the process.
But the commissioner reportedly refused, saying the original survey number had been illegally deleted from the records. The commissioner also contended that the government would be left with only eight acres of land if his department issued RTC to around 40 people, including Mr Jadhav's mother. Meanwhile, general inquiries about the other claimants proved suspicious and the file was kept pending, the commissioner reportedly told Mr Jadhav.
Meanwhile, the commissioner of SSLR and ex-officio director (Bhoomi and UPOR) wrote to the Deputy Commissioner on July 26, 2016 stating, “The Anekal Tahsildar has requested the Bhoomi monitoring cell to allow deleting of Survey Number 29 in village Ramanayakanahalli, Sarjapur hobli to create Survey No 29/1 using RTC transfer option from one village to another. The request is illegal in as much as it is impermissible under KLRC to use this software provision to delete/create/mutate RTCs within the same village.”
Interestingly, after the commissioner refused to clear the file, the government transferred him from the post on July 21, 2016 and he handed over the charge on July 26.
