By S.T. Ravikumar

Mysore/Mysuru: With land prices soaring by the day in Mysuru, land-grabbers are looking at newer ways to encroach upon MUDA and other Government lands either by creating fake records or by making files go missing from Government records.

Recently, it was discovered that several important pages of files pertaining to land records had been torn off or replaced with fake documents in MUDA.

Now, another case of land encroachment has been unearthed by MUDA authorities and subsequently measures are being taken to reclaim 1.15 acres of encroached land coming under a Hinkal Survey Number.

Upon finding that 1.15 acres of land in Vijayanagar 2nd Stage, coming under Hinkal Survey No. 105 had been encroached upon by some private persons, allegedly in connivance with MUDA staff, the previous MUDA Commissioner Dr. D.B. Natesh on Mar.4, 2022 wrote to the Deputy Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner seeking cancellation of the Khata of the said land. He had also directed the MUDA officials to take back possession of the land.

Details: The Government on Mar.29,1984 had issued notification for acquisition of 1.15 acres of land in Hinkal Survey No.105 for formation of Vijayanagar Layout.

Accordingly, the land acquisition process was completed on Aug.6,1985, following which the said land was documented in the RTC as MUDA acquired land.

But on Feb.7, 2006, the then MUDA Special Land Acquisition officer de-notified the land in the absence of any Government order or a Court ruling.  With a copy of the de-notification in hand, the then Mysuru Taluk Tahsildar subsequently registered Khata for the said land in the name of a woman. Later on, the ‘Pahani’ record (MRH 4/2014-15) of the said land was illegally  issued in the name of one Venkatachala Reddy, son of late Kondareddy on Feb.20, 2021.

This action had led to suspicion of a huge irregularity as no official has the power to denotify a land  without a Government order or a Court ruling. But despite knowing this fact, the then Land Acquisition Officer had denotified the land and also got the Khata registered in the name of a private person, which raised serious doubts about the entire process.

Previous MUDA Commissioner Dr. Natesh, who had taken serious note of this alleged irregularity, ordered the officials to get the Khata registration of the said land cancelled by writing to the Deputy Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner immediately and take control of the land.

MUDA Special Land Acquisition Officer reacts

Meanwhile, the current MUDA Special Land Acquisition Officer Harshavardhan, reacting to the alleged illegal Khata registration, said that the order issued by the previous Commissioner Dr. D.B. Natesh would be shown to  the present Commissioner G.T. Dinesh Kumar and the matter would be discussed in detail with him.

Stating that he does not know how the then Land Acquisition Officer had de-notified the land coming under Hinkal Survey No.105 without any Government sanction or a Court ruling, Harshavardhan said that based on the directions to be issued by the higher-ups regarding the matter, he would write to the Tahsildar seeking cancellation of Khata registration of the 1.15 acres of land in question.