By IANS
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Wednesday came down heavily on the Delhi Development Authority, the capital’s land management agency, for failing to prevent land encroachment and suggested the body should be restructured.
“Your officials are doing nothing. They just sit in office and allow the valuable land to be unauthorisedly occupied,” a bench comprising Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice Veena Birbal said while hearing a matter related to encroachment in Ashok Nagar.
The bench said the agency needed to be restructured to make it efficient. “It is time to introspect on your functioning. There is a need to restructure your entire machinery, otherwise there would be anarchy, with common citizens waiting in the line for their turn while some would illegally take over the property.”
The court criticised DDA officials for their alleged connivance with ‘land mafia’, and said it would order a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry if needed.
“How can you allow people to take illegal possession of your land? It is not your property. It belongs to the people and you are just a trustee,” the court said.
The court had taken up the matter of land encroachment on its own initiative after media reports alleged that the land mafia was illegally occupying large chunks of DDA land.
In this case, the DDA was given the ownership of around 920 bighas (230 acres) of land in east Delhi in 1987 but it allegedly failed to take possession of it due to encroachment. According to the agency, 600 bighas (150 acres) out of the total land is under illegal control.
The bench suggested that DDA should construct walls around its property to prevent encroachment.