Land-use rules tweaked, records twisted to benefit realtors

RTI query reveals how a piece of Sankey tank land usurped

Many discrepancies were found in the documents pertaining to a piece of land in the valley zone of Sankey Tank, which indicate forgery and mischief by some government officials to favour the vested interests.

Worried with the possible choking of Sankey Tank due to a mega construction project on its valley, the residents of Malleswaram dug out many documents under the RTI.

An important document, extracted under the RTI Act, was the sale deed executed by the Deputy Secretary of the Commerce and Industries Department H L Lingaraj Urs in favour of M A Narasimhachar, the Managing Director of the Mysore Industrial Testing Laboratory, to set up a pharmaceutical company on July 12, 1967. It was found out that the schedule of the property, such as the length, breadth and area, was conspicuously missing in it.

V N Ramaswami, who filed the RTI query, sought to know from the department the reason behind the absence of schedule of the property. He got a reply that there is a separate plan mentioning the schedule of the property.

Ramaswami said, “When I filed an RTI application in the office of the sub-registrar seeking certified copy of the plan, initially I was told that the related registers, which were maintained for the purpose of making distinct entries regarding registration of the plan was missing. Later, the plan (map) surfaced.”

As the signatures of the two officials in the registered document and the plans did not tally with each other, Ramaswami got them (signatures) verified by three prominent handwriting and fingerprint experts of India, including the court-approved expert Ashok Kashyap in Delhi.

Kashyap concluded in his observation that the disputed signatures of M A Narasimhachar and H L Lingaraj Urs in the map (plan) “provide a strong prima facie evidence of not having been written by the author...” of registration document.

A member of Malleswaram Residents' Welfare Association requesting anonymity told Deccan Herald, “The BDA relied on the manipulated documents and gave its nod for change of land use, which should be investigated.”

He demanded the formation of a committee headed by the chief secretary, secretaries of Urban Development department, Forest department, Survey Settlement department, Commerce and Industries to look into the illegalities and suspend the orders permitting the change of land use and file criminal cases against those involved in forging signatures and the plan.