JAMMU : Eviction drive on encroached state land has opened new vistas for crowdless small time self styled leaders especially in Jammu city who are playing spoilsport on behalf of major beneficiaries of Roshni scam to thwart nationalist agenda of LG Manoj Sinha.
Undue attention in media is being paid to stage managed protests being reported from some pockets of Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory after the LG administration has set deadline of 31st January, 2023 for retrieval of 100 percent encroachments on state and kahcharia land.
If insiders in CID department are to be believed, as part of a well planned conspiracy the kingpins of land grabbing have catapulted the poor as their front line workers for staging anti government demonstration with a sole pre planned motive to stall the much awaited anti encroachment drive against the chronic land grabbers.
“These sponsored protests are engineered by those background players who are in possesion of huge chunks of state land worth several crores of rupees and enjoying strong foothold in society by way of their foul clout in the corridors of power” said a senior rank police officer, who wished not to be named.
Even, a section of the officials/officers of revenue department with blemished track record are allegedly instrumental in igniting the fires of demonstrations and protests for according a cover for their past administrative misdeeds pertaining to free for all encroachments upon state land with impunity, asserted reliable sources in Revenue department.
Noted anti corruption crusader, Prof. S.K Bhalla who exploded the Roshni Scam while expressing concern at the recent developments said “The intentions of the LG’s administration are praise worthy but there is absence of a well thought out strategy to tackle the demon of encroachments in J&K”.
Further elaborating his view point, Prof Bhalla explained to the author of this post that the identified bigwigs including politicians, some retired judges, police officers, bureaucrats, land mafias and businessman are the major beneficiaries of land loot and now they are all out to frustrate the efforts of the government by exploiting poor mens names who are ironically in possesion of only a few marlas of state land.
Counting names of influential stalwarts whose names are revolving around state land comprise Haseeb Drabu, Raman Bhalla, Subash Choudhary, Bansi Lal Gupta, Mushtaq Chaya, Mohd Shafi Pandit (Retd Chief Secretary), Prem Sagar Aziz, Sajjad Kitchloo, Aslam Goni, M Y Khan (Ex Chairman of J&K Bank), Syed Akhoon, Farooq Abdullah etc, Prof Bhalla avers that hitting the poor and small fries during anti encroachment drive may cause wide spread resentment which in turn is only beneficial for the mighty players.
“If the government means business then the anti encroachment drive at first instance must start from big sharks in consonance with top down approach”, added Prof Bhalla.
Pertinently, in past the J&K government has put in public domain lists of Roshni scam beneficiaries but the same failed to yield desired results as most of the political opponents of BJP have branded the move as political witch hunt to silent them.
Now, it is high time for administration led by LG Manoj Sinha to lead this anti encroachment drive to its logical conclusion which over the years has become a game of snake and ladder between the powerful encroachers and weak kneed governments of the past.