PANAJI
Almost two months after its submission, the State Cabinet on Wednesday accepted Justice VK Jadhav (retd) headed one-man Commission’s inquiry report on the multi-crore land grab cases in Goa, the implementation of which will be done in a phased manner. For now, the government has initiated a process to repatriate the “no man’s land” and the “government lands” that were fraudulently sold out.
The one-man panel, constituted on August 30, 2022, under the Commission of Inquiries Act, 1952, submitted its report to the government with recommendations on November 1, 2023. The Commission was dealing with 44 FIRs registered by the Special Investigating Team (SIT) involving 93 land parcels and properties measuring 1.5 lakh square metres across Goa. A total of 23 people, including government servants, were arrested in the matter.
Addressing media persons post the cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that the Cabinet has accepted the one-man commission report on land grab and its implementation will be done in the future on a time-to-time basis.
“All the suggestions of the Commission will be implemented. The Commission has recommended that we should take back the “no man’s land” and government land parcels, which were sold out by forging the documents. We will take this up on priority. If anyone claims to be the owner of the ‘no man’s land’, then he should make the claims with original documents after it is freed from SIT,” Sawant said.
He said that the Commission has also suggested the custody of archival documents and their digitisation. He said that the government is waiting for the police inquiry report from SIT.
“We will see that all the cases are chargesheeted,” the chief minister said, adding that the total size of the properties would be known once the police report is submitted.
The Commission was constituted to inquire and fix the responsibility in all the cases of land grab involving private land and any other land in the State, and to find out the involvement of government officers and any other public functionaries and private individuals in such land grabbing.
