Repossessing encroached land priority for new K and K chief

Identifying Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) encroached land and securing it back will be one of the major targets that Major General K S Venugopal is hoping to achieve. Venugopal assumed the office as the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Karnataka and Kerala Sub Area, on Friday.

According to Major General A K Pradhan, the outgoing GOC, about eight cases of encroachment have been identified in Bangalore alone.

Venugopal, who was in-charge of operations in the Southern Command said: “Generally, all the state governments are proactive when it comes to encroachment. If it pertains to them, they have been keen on admitting and allotting suitable, alternative land.”
He, however, said that evicting individuals from the encroached land is difficult.

Pointing out that the Centre and the MoD are more serious about the problem of encroachments, Venugopal said: “We conduct joint surveys in all the stations as the government is keen on identifying the defence land.”

He said that the problem generally occur in the metros where the demand for land and the prices shoot upwards all the time.

Adding to this, Pradhan said: “...In fact, we own about 5,000 acre of land in Bellary, not an inch has been encroached upon. We actually hold a little land more than we are supposed to.”

Other issues that are on priority list for Venugopal are welfare of ex-servicemen, for which he said he will continue the dialogues initiated by Pradhan with both, the Karnataka and the Kerala governments and providing accommodate to all serving officers.
“In the next two-three years all serving personnel in the sub area will have accommodation of over 1.20 lakh dwelling units. They are under various stages of ,” he said.

He also revealed that Defence Minister A K Antony has cleared a proposal that envisages repair and maintenance of all the defence buildings at a cost of Rs 2,500 crore and exuded confidence that a budgetary allocation will be coming their way.

He also said that improving civil-military relationship is also on the agenda.