Scam Expose: 4 Shocking Land Acquisition Frauds of the Year

This has been the year of land scams, controversies and buyer agitations. Just open the newspaper and you could easily sniff a land scam brewing in every corner of the country. Be it the Millennium City- Gurgaon, the IT hotspot-Bangalore, the Dream City- Mumbai or even the investor's hotspot Noida Extension, scams have affected the real estate market badly. The question that arises is, when government bodies are involved and a strong legal framework (Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013) is in place, then why and how such cases occur.

Let's discuss what hit the headlines this year.

Noida Extension/ Yamuna Expressway:  Noida Extension could be termed as an absolute nightmare when it comes to land issues, considering the increasing number of cases being reported here. Apart from the nation-wide agitation in 2011 and the Brahma Pal case (Dankaur village) a few months back there is much more to the list. Recently the land consolidation department detected a 147 bigha scam worth Rs. 441 crores in Dankaur's Jaganpur and Afzalpur village. Here, it was found out that 23 land parcels were grabbed clandestinely. According to officials, leases of these land parcels (pattas) were cancelled but are still clueless as how the names of the so called owners figured up in the revenue records.

• Modus Operandi: As agricultural land is expensive when compared to Gram samaj land, farmers exchanged 1 bigha of agricultural land with 9 bigha of Gram samaj land. After that, the farmers sold their land by plotting in lieu of compensation from the authority.

Gurgaon: This city of skyscrapers also came under the scam radar recently. It was reported that Land Acquisition Act was misused by the Haryana and Gurgaon Development authorities to let private builders illegally acquire 1,400 acres spanning across sectors 58 to 63 and 65 to 67 in Gurgaon. Recently, Supreme Court asked the collector of the city to submit details of each and every transaction that happened during that time at the earliest.

• Modus Operandi: The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) proposed a land acquisition spree to develop several residential and commercial sectors in the city. Panicked, plenty of village people sold their land to private buyers fearing they may lose it in the future for peanuts. However, no sooner such agreements took place; the land declared for acquisition was released in favor of builders and individual owners.

Bangalore: The Arkavathy Layout issue was the most talked about news in Bangalore this year. Here comes the story. In 2003 the government planned to form a layout with 22,000 sites through the BDA (Bangalore Development Authority) covering 3,839 acres of land across 16 villages. Later due to petition filed by locals and internal political miscommunication the layout area was finally reduced to 541 acres (June, 2014). This land inclusion and deletion opened a can of worms in the industry and highlighted the span of nepotism and corruption among officials.

• Modus Operandi: The BDA initially acquired a large amount of land to build the layout and offered modest compensation to the owners but later the area was reduced to not even a third of it. This shows either there was a lack of planning on the part of authorities for such a high profile project or indicates the influence of political bigwigs/builders who got certain portions of land deleted from the proposed layout.

Mumbai: This glamour city is a regular on news shows this year; not for entertainment but for land frauds. From the final closure of the Rs. 45,000 crore Hiranandani Powai Land Scam to unlimited hearings in the ever going Adarsh case, the year saw it all. The additional surprise in the Mumbai story was the massive land scam amounting to Rs 7,411 crore. Here the case pertains to a Mumbai slum rehabilitation project.

• Modus Operandi: Ghar Bachao Andolan exposed this massive slum fraud which involved everyone from top bureaucrats to leading builders. Here, thousands of slum dwellers were evicted on the grounds of rehabilitation, but not even a single home was allotted to them. The flats built on the land asked for the resettlement was sold privately.

Such glaring examples actually highlight the enormity of the land acquisition frauds. In such a scenario, only strict and transparent laws with heavy penalties can ensure less scams and a corruption free India.