Tamil Nadu to provide free pattas to encroachers of government land

CHENNAI: Months after the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the country’s top auditor, slammed the state for not addressing the issue of encroachments of government land, the Tamil Nadu government has announced a six month drive to clear all encroachments in rural areas and provide alternative house sites with pattas to those who are getting displaced.
Each relocated family would be provided three cents of housing plot with assistance to construct houses or allocation in the slum clearance board tenements.

Revenue secretary Atulya Misra has sent a series of guidelines to the district collectors to evict the encroachers and restore the government lands to their original shapes and purposes. “If lands are not available in respective villages, private lands may be acquired through revenue department/purchase through talks, and free house site pattas could be given to the beneficiaries,” Misra said. The families could be accommodated in the housing schemes of the rural development department, such as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Rural) for which socio-economic census of 2011 will be considered to identify the beneficiaries. Under the scheme, the unit cost of Rs 1.7 lakh is shared by the Centre and the state. If the names are not found in the census, the beneficiaries will be considered under the chief minister’s solar powered greenhouse scheme, which guarantees 300sq ft house at ₹2.1lakh.
In case of unavoidable circumstances, the district collectors have been told to study if the encroached land could be regularized for those staying there for a long time. If need be, there could be in situ development of slum clearance board tenements. “The regularisation scheme is timebound. The eligible beneficiaries will have to approach the collectors to avail the opportunity. The collectors will check if the lands are objectionable or not. A resolution from the local body is required, if the land falls in its jurisdiction. If it is a grazing ground, then noobjection certificate will have to be obtained,” a senior revenue official told TOI.
Lands classified as poramboke, including water course, grazing lands, road, cart track, forest etc are considered objectionable by the government. In its performance audit on ‘encroachments on government lands,’ tabled in the assembly, the CAG said that 2.05 lakh hectare or 7% of the government lands were under encroachment as of June 2017. Encroachments on water bodies accounted for 49%. “Lack of coordination between revenue and other departments caused difficulties in evicting the encroachers,” the CAG said.