The Roshni Act or the Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act was enacted by the then state government led by the Chief Minister Dr. Farooq Abdullah in November 2001, and it came into effect in March 2002.
The law was envisaged to generate revenue by allotment of ownership rights to “illegal encroachers” of state land subject to payment of land cost fixed by the government to generate financial resources for tapping and developing hydro-electric power in J&K.
Over 21,000 kanals (some reports suggest more) of land (one acre is equal to 8 kanals, and one kanal measure 5400 sq. feet) were transferred to illegal encroachers at discounts ranging up to 80 percent of the prevalent market rates.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that scrutinised the efficacy of Roshni Act found that just Rs 76 crore had been collected instead of Rs 25,000 crore, and in the process, prime state land costing billions was transferred into private ownership.
For instance, a kanal of state land costing anywhere around Rs three crore (as per current market value) in the Gogjibagh residential area of Srinagar city was transferred into the ownership of illegal encroachers for just Rs 20 lakh.
The Act was scrapped by last J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik in November 2018. It was said that the Act was repealed as “it failed to realise the desired objectives and there were also reports of misuse of some of its provisions”.
But the people who benefitted through allotments of prime state lands in Srinagar and Jammu cities have nevertheless successfully acquired ownership of these lands at virtually throwaway prices.
On October 09, 2020, a division bench of the J&K High Court comprising Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal, handed over the probe of what is now known as Roshni scam, to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The court directed the chief secretary, two divisional commissioners and deputy commissioners to provide all details to the CBI. The court further directed the CBI to file a status report every eight weeks.
Given its nature and scale, the scam involving the Roshni Act may seem unprecedented in the history of J&K; but it is not – at least in the sense that its beneficiaries include the influential, the powerful, bold and the beautiful of the state’s political, bureaucratic, and wealthy who’s who. This class has always been at the forefront – the sole recipients of similar other largesse and windfalls for which laws and rules are tweaked turned and twisted every now and then with much ease.
Credit it to the current political situation, the curtains drawn on this scam are seemingly drawing up, allowing a peep into why J&K has been indexed among the most corrupt places in India by Transparency International.
The list of beneficiaries of the Roshni Act includes the National Conference, Congress and other parties and several of their political functionaries. The party headquarters of the National Conference at the ‘Nawa-e-Subha’ complex in Srinagar was constructed on state land after transferring its ownership to the trustees. National Conference headquarters ‘Sher-e-Kashmir Bhawan’ in Jammu city also exists on state land transferred through controversial allotment made under the Roshni Act. The Congress party also owns one of the costliest pieces of real estate in the heart of Srinagar city under the name of the ‘Khidmat Trust’, and its ownership was transferred to the trustee under the Act. Its headquarters on the famous Residency Road is another such prime property.
Other beneficiaries are Haseeb Drabu, the then finance minister in the Mufti Muhammed Sayeed-led state government and his brother. It also includes prominent businessmen MushtaqAhmad Chaya, who is known to have wielded influence in different state governments from time to time, and Mohammad Shafi Pandit, a former senior bureaucrat who finally headed the J&K Public Service Commission. Other top retired bureaucrats, Khurshid Ahmad Ganai and Tanveer Jahan, are also reportedly beneficiaries under the Act along with Krishen Amla, a prominent businessman whose family is known for close links to the top leadership of the Congress party. The long list of beneficiaries also has the name of Mehboob Beg, son of MirzaAfzal Beg, who was a close associate of late Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah.
By the way, all these names are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The list of beneficiaries is as huge and fat as the scam itself.
No wonder that the High Court has said that all allotments made under the Act are void ‘ab initio’. The court has also decided to monitor the CBI investigation which has been directed to file the status report within 8 weeks.
Earlier, the anti-corruption bureau of Jammu (vigilance) was investigating the matter and had registered 17 FIRs so far. But given the manner in which the bureau was handling the case, the court deemed it appropriate to divest it of the investigation and hand it over to the CBI.
Among other things, as per the CAG, it has been found that most of the conditions had been violated (by government functionaries) in the identification and verification of the land. Revenue entries, including the fundamental Girdhawari extracts, have been criminally compromised. Change of land use and category has been ignored for drastically reducing the prices.
Even the land held by the government departments, like the Jammu Development Authority, which was outside the purview of the Roshni Act, have been found transferred to unauthorized occupants. Stamp duty worth hundreds of crores has been dispensed within almost all cases.
Congress, NC benefited from Roshni land scam, says CAG
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s report tabled in the State Legislature in March 2014 pointed to Congress and National Conference — two principal mainstream political parties — as “institutional beneficiaries” of the Rs 25,000-crore Roshni scam in Jammu and Kashmir.
While as Congress grabbed eight kanals of prime State land on the fashionable Residency Road and The Bund for the party-controlled Khidmat Trust, National Conference raised its party headquarters ‘Nawai-e-Subuh’ under the auspices of Nawai-e-Subuh Trust on the similarly grabbed state land of four kanals.
Both the parties got the lands transferred to the two trusts under the garb of The Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, or the Roshni Act, against peanuts, in brazen violation of rules and norms.
The Price Committee headed by the Kashmir Divisional Commissioner put the two prime properties’ market value at Rs 13.10 crore in 2007 though these are currently valued at Rs 100 crore, including the cost of the building constructed.
Leased out to commercial establishments, the five-floor buildings also serve as the headquarters of the two political parties’ official organs — Khidmat and Nawa-e-Subuh. NC has set up its party headquarters and most of its state and provincial offices at Nawa-e-Subuh Complex.
Even under the ‘Roshni’ Act, these properties were required to be transferred to the two land grabbers on commercial rates. Officials, however, charged ‘charity’ rates.
Such kind of the grabbed state lands were conveniently brought under the ambit of the Roshni Act by the rules framed by the Executive and not ratified by the Legislature. It was done to benefit selective “educational, religious, charitable, non-profitable, social institutions, Trusts, Societies, political parties recognized by Election Commission of India”, granting them rebates of 50 to 85 percent on the rates fixed by the Price Committees.
“In contravention of the said provisions of the Act, lands were transferred to seven ‘institutional entities in Srinagar with no safeguards…”, said the CAG report. It pointed out in detail how 7 kanals and 16 marlas of the land was transferred to KhidmatTrust and 3 kanals and 16 marlas of the land to Nawai-e-SubuhTrust for just peanuts.
“Thus, lands valued by the committee at Rs 13.10 crore were approved for transfer at a price of Rs 1.97 crore against which only Rs 1.47 crore had been collected,” said the CAG report. It pointed out that these lands could be transferred only on the commercial rate. Officials of the Revenue Department were under a legal obligation to start eviction of the occupants “within two months” in case they failed to deposit the money in full. “None of them discharged the duty.”
‘Roshni’ means light, but the very term has become synonymous with the gloom and darkness of corruption in Jammu and Kashmir — presided, patronized, and promoted by the government and its institutions in the past. How the scam, under the leadership of Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, will be dealt with by the CBI remains to be seen.
References:
https://news.statetimes.in/ncs-hqrs-on-roshni-land-accidental-minister-too-among-beneficiaries/
https://news.statetimes.in/cong-loses-rs-150-crore-roshni-property-to-kars-family/
https://news.statetimes.in/sheikh-nazir-national-garage-roshnis-biggest-beneficiaries-in-jammu/
https://kashmirlife.net/roshnis-load-shedding-issue-29-vol-12-249734/
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