india

Updated: Feb 22, 2020 00:12 IST

A day after the Jammu and Kashmir high court expressed shock over how encroachers had become owners of large tracts of public land under the erstwhile Roshni Act, the advocate who filed a petition against the law said the court’s observation substantiated his claim that it was aimed at bringing about a demographic change in Hindu-majority Jammu by triggering a “land jihad.”

The court’s observation came after the J&K government filed a status report on the beneficiaries of the Roshni Act, which was scrapped in November 2018 by then governor Satya Pal Malik, whose administration found the law to be an attempt to change the demographics of the entire region .

“It is a big development. The Court observation has proved that there was a demographic change. Thirty thousand cases of land transfer were reported in the state government order, out of which over 25,000 cases were from Jammu and only 4,500 from Kashmir,” lawyer Ankur Sharma said.

Aimed at conferring 20.55 lakh kanals of state land to its occupants, the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, popularly known as Roshni Act, was implemented in 2001 by Ghulam Nabi Azad, the then chief minister of the erstwhile state, which was divided into two Union territories -- J&K and Ladakh -- on October 31, 2019..

The Act,the then government claimed, was aimed at generating resources for power projects and to confer proprietary rights to occupants of state land subject to payment of the land cost fixed by the government. Governor Malik’s administration scrapped the law citing its failure “to realize the desired objectives and there were also reports of misuse of some its provisions.’

“It was a big physical assault on Jammu,” advocate Sharma said. “Our allegation that state land was given to Muslims to change the demographic of Jammu has been substantiated by the records produced before the high court”..

Advocate Sharma said that 1 million to 1.5 million kanals of forest land was given to the encroachers under the Act in Jammu and that 85-90%t of the beneficiaries were likely to be Muslims, who were given proprietary rights under the Act.

“They are politicians, bureaucrats and other influential people. Their names will be shared later,” he added.

He said the division bench of the high court (comprising chief justice Gita Mittal and justice Tashi Rabstan) had said the case is likely to be to handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), most likely on the next date of hearing, March 12.

The division bench on Thursday directed the J&K government to file an affidavit affirming the authenticity of the list of beneficiaries of Roshni Act and also confirm that it was complete in all respects. The bench gave the government one week time to file the affidavit.

During the course of hearing, advocate Sharma submitted, “The list of persons who have been benefitted by the Roshni scheme includes the names of several public figures and government officials.”

He called for a CBI inquiry into the matter, citing a Comptroller and Auditor General of India finding that implementation of the Roshni Scheme resulted in a loss of over Rs 25,000 crores to the exchequer.