Unabated menace of land grabbing
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Mohammad Ali
GRABBING public landed property has been the usual way of things for some people who are in a position to call the shots. Even private lands are forcibly occupied, fake documents are prepared and other official records are falsified to manipulate 'titles' to such property. That is the way that most wrong things are done in case of landed property in a land-scare country like Bangladesh.
The mushrooming of the so-called property developers has, according to many people, been made possible because of such misdeeds. And the doers and abettors of such 'misdeeds' are hardly brought to the book. They are very powerful, indeed. The long arms of law do hardly reach them. The country's moth-eaten judicial system is often found to protect such doers. Long delays in judicial settlement process frustrate attempts by the victims to recover their land from unauthorised or illegal occupiers or owners.
One can cite here the cases of some of the landed property belonging to the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). It has become all too easy for someone with the needed unholy contacts to grab the lands that belong rightfully to the DCC. This body in the capital city of the country is suffering from acute insufficiency of lands for undertaking various developmental works. Besides the DCC, other utility agencies of the government such as the one that supplies life-giving water to the residents of the city, are in need of lands. For example, Dhaka Water and Supply Authority (DWASA) could approach the DCC for land to set up pumping stations to lift up underground water on emergency basis for supplying water to areas where water supply has practically stopped. But in many instances, DWASA is unable to carry out such projects as DCC has no lands available for the purpose or its lands have been grabbed. There are many other examples of DCC's grabbed lands holding up developmental or utility services' expansion-related works whereas the grabbers are having a heyday from their occupation of such lands and using the same for running their own businesses.
The greater public interest is, thus, getting frustrated from the sheer illegality practiced by some individuals and the pathetic response of the government to the same. And that has so obviously been happening in the capital city of the country and also with regard to public landed property. In this situation, one can easily guess what can happen in other places of the country and also in areas of private property, in view of the dominance of power of 'dirty' money and muscle-that-matter over the lives of the ordinary citizens.
A recent media report highlighted that DCC's lands in some important locations alone were grabbed by individuals the present market value of which would be in the neighbourhood of at least Taka 20 billion. The grabbers using political influence or the support of powerful persons in the administration, grab the lands and maintain their unauthorised occupation of the same, meeting hardly any action to evict them. In most of the cases, the DCC's only response is starting a case against the occupier or the occupier himself starting a case against the DCC while maintaining physical control over the land.
Government or DCC-appointed lawyers usually represent them in the cases who are poorly motivated in the first place to do their job with determination and efficiency. The remuneration received by the government-appointed lawyers are at the rate that has not changed for many years. Therefore, the government lawyers in these cases consider their fees as pittances compared to what the lawyers defending the grabbers usually get from their clients. In some cases, allegations were noted that the government lawyers even receive big bribes under the table from the grabbers to ensure their inactivity or deliberate poor performance at the hearings. Thus, the grabbers, in many cases, are able to successfully get titles over the lands when the court verdicts are finally delivered.
The report under mention that was published in the front page of the daily Ittefaq in its issue on March 10 last, mentioned how one such grabber in a part of old Dhaka laid claim to some four bighas of land that used to be under DCC's effective use and control for many years using political contacts he enjoyed. He obtained also a court order that the land was disputed and for status quo to be maintained in it. Later, after the changeover to the caretaker administration on one-eleven, he reportedly used his contacts with a powerful retired official to extend his full physical control over this piece of land.
It would make a long list if all instances of such land grabs are mentioned. But this is not the point. What the government should be doing is designing a prompt response to such shocking loss of its rights over its own lands -- or lands owned by the local government bodies or any other public sector or autonomous or semi-autonomous bodies -- which can be put to better uses in the greater public interest. The government and other concerned bodies do need to take effective actions to recast the manner in which they face the legal battles with the grabbers. They should remake the present system of legal defence much stronger against the grabbers. Adequate incentives should also be created for the government lawyers to be resolved to do their work to the best of their abilities through raising their fees to make the same competitive or better than the ones provided by the grabbers to their lawyers. The government-appointed lawyers should be also under an accountability framework while dealing in such cases.
A corruption cleansing exercise will also be necessary to ensure that corrupt public officials do not get the opportunity to deliberately supply poor records, distort them or hold them back, so that the cases against the grabbers become automatically weak.
And for countering the menace of grabbing of private lands by the powerful, the redress mechanism must be made effective so that the weak who are mostly the victims of the outrageous illegal land occupation in the private sector, can get effective remedies at least costs.
GRABBING public landed property has been the usual way of things for some people who are in a position to call the shots. Even private lands are forcibly occupied, fake documents are prepared and other official records are falsified to manipulate 'titles' to such property. That is the way that most wrong things are done in case of landed property in a land-scare country like Bangladesh.
The mushrooming of the so-called property developers has, according to many people, been made possible because of such misdeeds. And the doers and abettors of such 'misdeeds' are hardly brought to the book. They are very powerful, indeed. The long arms of law do hardly reach them. The country's moth-eaten judicial system is often found to protect such doers. Long delays in judicial settlement process frustrate attempts by the victims to recover their land from unauthorised or illegal occupiers or owners.
One can cite here the cases of some of the landed property belonging to the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). It has become all too easy for someone with the needed unholy contacts to grab the lands that belong rightfully to the DCC. This body in the capital city of the country is suffering from acute insufficiency of lands for undertaking various developmental works. Besides the DCC, other utility agencies of the government such as the one that supplies life-giving water to the residents of the city, are in need of lands. For example, Dhaka Water and Supply Authority (DWASA) could approach the DCC for land to set up pumping stations to lift up underground water on emergency basis for supplying water to areas where water supply has practically stopped. But in many instances, DWASA is unable to carry out such projects as DCC has no lands available for the purpose or its lands have been grabbed. There are many other examples of DCC's grabbed lands holding up developmental or utility services' expansion-related works whereas the grabbers are having a heyday from their occupation of such lands and using the same for running their own businesses.
The greater public interest is, thus, getting frustrated from the sheer illegality practiced by some individuals and the pathetic response of the government to the same. And that has so obviously been happening in the capital city of the country and also with regard to public landed property. In this situation, one can easily guess what can happen in other places of the country and also in areas of private property, in view of the dominance of power of 'dirty' money and muscle-that-matter over the lives of the ordinary citizens.
A recent media report highlighted that DCC's lands in some important locations alone were grabbed by individuals the present market value of which would be in the neighbourhood of at least Taka 20 billion. The grabbers using political influence or the support of powerful persons in the administration, grab the lands and maintain their unauthorised occupation of the same, meeting hardly any action to evict them. In most of the cases, the DCC's only response is starting a case against the occupier or the occupier himself starting a case against the DCC while maintaining physical control over the land.
Government or DCC-appointed lawyers usually represent them in the cases who are poorly motivated in the first place to do their job with determination and efficiency. The remuneration received by the government-appointed lawyers are at the rate that has not changed for many years. Therefore, the government lawyers in these cases consider their fees as pittances compared to what the lawyers defending the grabbers usually get from their clients. In some cases, allegations were noted that the government lawyers even receive big bribes under the table from the grabbers to ensure their inactivity or deliberate poor performance at the hearings. Thus, the grabbers, in many cases, are able to successfully get titles over the lands when the court verdicts are finally delivered.
The report under mention that was published in the front page of the daily Ittefaq in its issue on March 10 last, mentioned how one such grabber in a part of old Dhaka laid claim to some four bighas of land that used to be under DCC's effective use and control for many years using political contacts he enjoyed. He obtained also a court order that the land was disputed and for status quo to be maintained in it. Later, after the changeover to the caretaker administration on one-eleven, he reportedly used his contacts with a powerful retired official to extend his full physical control over this piece of land.
It would make a long list if all instances of such land grabs are mentioned. But this is not the point. What the government should be doing is designing a prompt response to such shocking loss of its rights over its own lands -- or lands owned by the local government bodies or any other public sector or autonomous or semi-autonomous bodies -- which can be put to better uses in the greater public interest. The government and other concerned bodies do need to take effective actions to recast the manner in which they face the legal battles with the grabbers. They should remake the present system of legal defence much stronger against the grabbers. Adequate incentives should also be created for the government lawyers to be resolved to do their work to the best of their abilities through raising their fees to make the same competitive or better than the ones provided by the grabbers to their lawyers. The government-appointed lawyers should be also under an accountability framework while dealing in such cases.
A corruption cleansing exercise will also be necessary to ensure that corrupt public officials do not get the opportunity to deliberately supply poor records, distort them or hold them back, so that the cases against the grabbers become automatically weak.
And for countering the menace of grabbing of private lands by the powerful, the redress mechanism must be made effective so that the weak who are mostly the victims of the outrageous illegal land occupation in the private sector, can get effective remedies at least costs.