About 50 people have been sold land by the land mafia in Sriramnagar Colony, Qutbullahpur, Ranga Reddy district, which belongs to the Army. The new owners want to start building on the land, but the Army calls them encroachers and will not allow any construction on land that it says belongs to it.
T. Srinivas, an ex-serviceman and one of the buyers, said, “Plots were sold to many people in Qutbullahpur. The land is adjacent to the Army’s Sriramnagar Colony. The Army has not clearly demarcated its boundary. We have got the land registered by the sub-registrar against the survey numbers, and the plots have also been cleared under Urban Land Ceiling and Layout Regularisation Scheme by the municipal authorities.”
An RTC employee, M. Reddy, purchased his plot of land about a year ago, but is not being allowed to build on it even though he has got all the approvals from the concerned state government offices. The Army authorities insist that Army land has been encroached by squatters in connivance with revenue officials. “Old records speak volumes about encroachment on military land. While we hope that the microfilming of revenue records and other attempts by the def-ence ministry for freeing Army land from encroachers will bear fruit in the future, we can’t let this encroachment continue to eat into military land,” said an Army official.
He said that if people are being duped, it is not the Army’s fault. “If one man claims that so and so military land belongs to him and there are ignorant buyers who go ahead and purchase land from him while revenue officials join hands with the land mafia, it is none of our business. It is unfortunate that we have to battle to save Army’s property in our own country,” he said.