Nexus of Good: Exemplary retrieval

Urban land is an increasingly rare natural resource. Over the past few decades, government land in urban areas has been poorly managed, primarily on account of lack of clarity in the role and jurisdiction of urban municipal bodies and revenue departments, poor land record management in urban areas and ineffective legal representation before the civil and the High Courts. Such mismanagement of urban government land and the skyrocketing land prices in the wake of rapid urbanisation has created various perverse incentives for land grabbers to encroach and divert the urban land, sometimes with the unfortunate connivance of some corrupt officials of revenue and urban administration.

Various infrastructural and low-income housing projects for the urban poor remain pending due to the unavailability of land in urban areas and the prohibitive cost of land acquisition.

To ensure the availability of land parcels for low-income housing and infrastructural projects (smart city initiatives, parking, medical college, software industry parks, etc.), efforts were made in the district of Ujjain over the last 18 months to identify, protect and reclaim the government land from encroachers and land mafias using multiple strategies — which led to reclaiming government land over 300 hectares, worth more than Rs 1,200 crores.

Over the past couple of decades, efforts of the district administration of Ujjain to reclaim government land had not been fruitful. The biggest factor for this failure was the unavailability of land records supporting the government's claim of ownership over the disputed land parcels. The reasons for this unavailability of land records were historic. Ujjain was an industrial centre of the erstwhile Gwalior State. It gave large tracts of land on the conditional lease to establish industry, the term of such leases was co-terminus with the running of the industrial establishment. The term used for such leases was self-explanatory 'Takayami Kaarkhana', translated as 'till the existence of the factory'.

However, after the merger of Gwalior State with independent India, such records were not transferred to the district administration of Ujjain. Various leaseholders started claiming themselves to be landowners. Gradually, these leaseholders got the land mutated in their name due to the negligence and/or connivance of the officials responsible for maintaining records. Government efforts to protect the land failed because of the unavailability of relevant land records in the Office of District Collector or the office of Commissioner Land Records, Gwalior.

The first challenge was to search for these pre-independence land records, presumed to be non-existing, missing or unavailable for many decades. The new team led by a young District Collector, Asheesh Singh, chose to think beyond the box. It was decided to dig deep into the archives section and museums of the state government in the hope of finding these elusive documents.

A team of dedicated and experienced officers was sent to Bhopal. After spending a lot of time searching for documents in the dusty archives, it was discovered that these lease documents were always available, lying in the cabinets of the archives department — unknown to the district administration. The industry department of the erstwhile Gwalior State had probably sent these documents for conservation purposes to the archives department without realising the importance of these documents to the future district administration.

However, discovering these documents led to the next challenge as these documents were written in Modi script of Marathi — the official script of the then Gwalior State ruled by Maratha rulers. Some officers in the team were well-versed in Marathi, but they were unfamiliar with the Modi script. Since independence, the Devanagari script has almost entirely replaced the Modi script for writing Marathi. So, these officers could not read the documents. An expert familiar with the Modi script to decipher these documents was located. Once these documents were translated to Hindi, they showed how large tracts of lands were given on lease on the condition of returning the land to the government after the purpose of the grant. Most of these leases were granted between the years 1920 to 1940 for establishing textile mills. However, these textile mills had not been in operation for decades and, the purpose of the grant of the lease being non-existing, the land should have been reverted to the government of Madhya Pradesh — the successor of the Gwalior State. This government land granted on leasehold terms was now being unscrupulously claimed as privately owned.

The availability of these land records from archives was only the first step. The second step was mounting an effective legal strategy to reclaim these lands based on the newly discovered documents. Under the guidance of Asheesh and another young IAS officer, Avi Prasad (Additional Collector), a team of officers was deployed to study these documents along with the Gwalior State law related to the lease grant. Close coordination was done with government lawyers and the Advocate General's Office to ensure that the government didn't lose any case due to weak legal representation before the civil court or the High Court. As the action was based on documents of government ownership and was in conformity with the law and the due process, the civil courts and the High Court refused to grant any relief to the land grabbers and encroachers in most of the cases. Once the legal battle was won, swift action was taken to remove the encroachment from the site, and land records were corrected to reflect the land as government.

Once large parcels of government land became available, long-pending projects were initiated. Suitable land was allotted and transferred to the Municipal Corporation of Ujjain, which has since undertaken the project to construct houses for the urban poor. Various infrastructural projects like the software industry park (16 hectares), medical college (4 hectares), and industrial park (14 hectares), among numerous others, are also at various stages of approval on the reclaimed land. Some of this valuable urban land is also being auctioned and monetised by the Public Assets Management Department of the state government.

What has been achieved by this team in Ujjain under the inspired leadership of two young and bright officers, Asheesh Singh and Avi Prasad, is truly inspiring and can be replicated in other districts in the true spirit of Nexus of Good.

Conclusion

The availability of government land is a prerequisite for urban planning and infrastructural needs of any city. This initiative has ensured that the future needs of the fast-expanding city of Ujjain will not be constrained because of the non-availability of land, and the government's precious resources will not be wasted on costly land acquisition. Also, this land reclaiming drive will address the land need for the upcoming Simhastha Kumbh Ujjain, scheduled in 2028. Initially, the efforts covered the land located in Ujjain's Municipal Corporation area. Since then, the scope has been expanded to include other municipal council areas and tehsils of the district. District administration's strategies for effective action for protecting, reclaiming, and defending urban government land can be adopted anywhere in the country with almost no cost to the exchequer.

Views expressed are personal