Government lands in illegal possession

The task of recovering the land should no doubt be high on the government agenda. But before that goal can be attained, some preparatory work has to be done. To begin with, there are discrepancies as to the actual quantum of government land that has been lost to expropriators so far. A study conducted by a Dhaka University Professor of Economics puts it at 33 lakh acres, while the land minister's figure is reportedly over six lakh acres. The study also claims that 90 per cent of the 21 lakh acres of vested property in the country has already been occupied illegally.

The facts and figures must represent the position accurately before any sensible move to drive away the illegal occupants can be made. The decision-makers should not rush headlong into a land recovery plan. What they can ill afford to ignore is that the problem has not been created overnight as successive governments showed total indifference to the issue. That created a golden opportunity for the greedy people to grab lands and keep them.

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The first task, therefore, is to clearly determine how much land has been grabbed; who are the grabbers, and what kind of legal intricacies the recovery plan may have to contend with. The survey must be based on old records.

There are, however, some tricky questions which cannot be set aside. What is the mechanism for detecting land grabbing? Were legal battles waged to get back the land? The problem here is that with the passage of time and the opportunity given to the land grabbers to consolidate the gains through fake documentation and all such fraudulent activities, the government may have to face a host of complications in recovering its land. It must not be forgotten that the grabbers were usually influential people having a good rapport with the government of the day.

Once the survey is complete and the grabbers identified with their ill-gotten property, the government will have to set about the job of evicting them. It will need a strong, collective political will that can offset the land grabbers' political clout.