New law to prevent land grabs will be introduced in assembly: Sawant

Panaji: Chief minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday said that state govt will bring in amendments to the existing laws and that a new act to thwart land grabs will be introduced during the monsoon session of the state legislative assembly in accordance with the recommendations of the one-man commission probing such illegalities.
“According to the recommendations, amendments will be done during the assembly session and new bills will be introduced.The special investigation team (SIT) probing land grab cases has started filling chargesheets in some, while the remaining will be sent to the courts to decide,” Sawant said.
The SIT has registered more than 100 land grab cases. “Cases of landowners who have submitted their claim to property will be sent to the court to decide on ownership. No man’s lands will be reverted to state govt,” the chief minister said.
More than 600 land grab petitions have been received by the SIT over the past 16 months, and more than 450 have been disposed of.
The SIT has registered a total of 51 FIRs, of which it is investigating 41 itself. The rest have either been transferred to the police stations concerned, or closure reports have been filed.
Before the SIT was constituted, Goa police data revealed that there were 128 cases of land scams registered in the state over the past 10 years, and over half of these — 73 — were concentrated at Porvorim/Socorro, and Mapusa in Bardez taluka.
In most cases, the accused persons identify land and create fake property ownership papers. The property is then sold to a colleague of the accused before it is finally sold to a third party.
State govt has accepted the report of the one-person commission, headed by retired justice V K Jadhav, on land grabbing in the state, which recommends the enactment of a law to prohibit and penalise such illegalities. It has been suggested that the state put in place laws to crack down on land grabbing similar to those that have been enacted by Assam, Gujarat, and Karnataka.
The commission said unclaimed land should be taken over by the state and the original property owners should be given possession of the land grabbed from them.
The commission recommended scientific investigations of cases involving allegations that forged notarial deeds of sale were inserted into the records of the department of archives and archaeology and civil registrar/sub-registrar.