The bench has directed the revenue secretary to file an affidavit by Wednesday “affirming” that the list of those who got state and forest land transferred to their names since 2001 (the year the erstwhile

government introduced the Roshni scheme) is “correct and complete in all respects”.

As its name suggests, the Roshni (light) scheme was meant to fund hydroelectric projects with revenue earned from the transfer of encroached state land to their occupants at market rates. This was to be done through the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001, which the state administrative council headed by former governor Satya Pal Malik repealed in 2018.

On a specific land-grab allegation made by the petitioner against former BJP legislator Abdul Gani Kohli at

in Jammu, the court questioned how the SSP (vigilance) “not only permitted continuation of the encroachment but (also) enabled buildings to come up on state land”. Kohli has been accused of setting up educational institutions on more than 1.25 acre of forest land there.

SRINAGAR: Laying bare a trail of alleged land grab in Kashmir stretching two decades back and involving “several public figures and government officials”, the J&K high court has noted how the now-defunct Roshni scheme became a much-misused instrument to transfer large tracts of encroached state and forest land to “beneficiaries” at a fourth of their market value.A February 20 order issued by a division bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Tashi Rabstan on a 2014 PIL seeking reclamation of 12,030.49 hectares of demarcated forest land also mentions repeated attempts by a section of officials “to withhold information from this court”.According to petitioner Ankur Sharma , who was a student of law when he filed the PIL six years ago, the CAG report of 2014 confirmed what he had suspected — that the beneficiaries of the Roshni scheme had short-changed the exchequer. Quoting from the CAG report, the writ petition states: “It was observed that only Rs 76.24 crore (24 per cent) was reportedly realised against a demand of Rs 317. 54 crore raised by the end of March 2013 in the actual transfer of 3,48,160 kanals.”Former CMs Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad stand accused of building houses on forest land in Bathindi. Former Congress minister Taj Mohiuddin has allegedly encroached on around 3.2 acres of forest land at Sedev in Shopian