Land that walks away

Land acquisition in Chhattisgarh for a highway has triggered complaints of fraudulent land transfers

It's difficult to imagine someone claiming your house to be his own, and selling it to a third party without you getting an inkling of it.

But this seems to be a routine affair in Chhattisgarh. Village Teka in Pithora block of Mahasamund district has no Naxals. It is as normal as it can be. But as far as Parasram Samra Bhoi, an adivasi farmer in Teka is concerned, things cannot be worse. Bhoi, a bespectacled elderly man, has been busy putting together all cases of land thefts in the village. For example, a fellow villager, Kanhai Binjhwar, got a piece of land adjoining the national highway as patta under the Forest Rights Act three years ago. Soon enough, his land was taken away for expansion of the national highway. A compensation amount was assured. But when he went to claim it, he found that three people - all non-tribals - had registered the land in their name without the permission of the collector. They even got compensated when the land was taken for road widening.

Bhoi took up the matter with the collector's office and is yet to get a response.

Manghu Bijhwar had a similar experience. His land has allegedly been registered under a merchant's name in Pithora, and the road widening compensation has been sent to him.

Bhoi has listed similar cases of Shyam Lal Bijhwar, Shauki Rawat and Paltu Rawat Rangi Rawat.

The cases are with the collector, and Bhoi hopes that action would soon be taken against those who have falsely registered the plots, even though the title deeds for these are still with the original owners.

The list given by Bhoi involved 50 acres of land. This is happening everywhere, he says.

Collector of Mahasamund district, R Shangita, says she is aware of the complaints, but wonders why did it take so long for the villagers to realise that their land had been taken by someone else. While this particular complaint is being looked into, the fact is that all those whose land was to be acquired for the expansion of national highway were sent notices in 2011, and people with land along the highway should have enquired why did they not get notices, and discovered false transfers, she says. Why are they coming with claims now, she asks.

But, according to Devendra Baghel, an activist in Pithora who received compensation for his land in village Pemra, which was acquired for the expansion, notices were sent along with compensation as recently as this year. While the collector says complaints of land appropriation by non-tribals were uncommon and often found to be false, Baghel says Bhoi was pointing at a common malaise. How can tribal land be taken by anyone without the permission of the collector, or a proposal by the panchayat, he asks. Bhoi even claims that the original owners continued to have title deeds of their land, though the land had passed hands.

The highway four-laning is going on across a stretch from Maharashtra passing through Chhattisgarh and ending in Odisha. The grabbing of tribal land by non-tribals is rampant, say Baghel and Bhoi.

The collector says the state is on its way to digitising land records, but she feels that claims of land being taken away fraudulently have nothing to do with records not being digitised.

In the times of the Right to Information Act, she says, people in Mahasamund are aware of things happening around them and no one can be cheated so easily. She says compensation was being paid for the last 11 months, ever since she was posted in the district, but the claims of illegal land transfers were new.

But Baghel paints a different picture where the villagers are at the mercy of the Tahsildar and Patwari in land matters. Even in the matter of compensation, he says, villagers are forced to bribe these officials. When they get cheques, many of them bounce, he adds. Such being the case of land acquisition by the government, the villagers wonder if they can ever hope for land being given in place of land wherever it is acquired.