Forgery & favour: How officials fuel land scams in Bengaluru

While technology makes land grabbing harder, loopholes and political protection allow land fraud to persist

Bengaluru: In 2014, a woman approached the High Court of Karnataka seeking denotification of 2 acres and 8 guntas land in Uttarahalli hobli, Bengaluru South taluk, putting the government and the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), which had issued the final notification for the land in 1994, on the defensive.

During the protracted (and ongoing) legal battle, an internal inquiry by the Revenue Department found that the woman’s claims were supported by multiple forged documents and tampering with original documents.

The scam involved erasing a 1979 entry in the Tenancy Register to fake occupancy rights, adding survey numbers to the original tenancy rights application, and creating a khata in the name of a deceased person, only to transfer it to his wife within months. The illegal khata, in turn, enabled the petitioner to move the high court, challenging the BDA notification.

Upon enquiry, the Bengaluru Division Regional Commissioner has reported that the collusion of the tahsildar and assistant commissioner cannot be ruled out in the case.

The case illustrates how land governance is undermined from within. Senior officials in the department contend that a successful land grab cannot happen without the connivance of officers at various levels.  The biggest victims of land fraud are the revenue and forest departments. Around 2.5 lakh acres of forest land are under encroachment while the revenue department says 1.5 lakh land parcels have been illegally occupied. In both cases, however, the ultimate cost is borne by the public. Encroachment on forest land has intensified human-wildlife conflicts, while the loss of green lung spaces has degraded the quality of life. 

Unlike encroachment, land grabs involve the active connivance of officials. Such operations involve tampering with old records, insertion of names to create rights, creation of forged documents and making bogus entries in mutation records. Investigations by joint legislature committees, task forces and internal inquiries have repeatedly revealed the role of officers. However, there has not been any real action or accountability. As the system continues to shield the guilty, most cases end in cursory suspensions.

Loopholes have not only allowed illegal land dealings but also spawned a criminal enterprise. This was evident in a series of cases busted by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) starting in 2020, where a group of about 10 persons, including advocates, were accused of grabbing land in over 112 cases. The modus operandi was simple: create fictitious records, file a suit in court with a fake plaintiff and a fake defendant, and secure a compromise decree from the court. The decree was then used to claim ownership of land, including private lands, which were eventually occupied by forcibly evicting the legal owners.

While these cases stand out due to the brazenness of the accused, they remain an aberration compared to the scams involving senior politicians and officials. Over the last two decades, three chief ministers have been accused in denotification scams, a former minister and his son were arrested in an industrial land scam, while a long line of officers, including a former chief secretary and a retired police officer once considered 'upright', were accused of grabbing government land. Land-grab scams cannot occur without the involvement of officials at some level. In fact, the high court order that led to the CID investigation had also directed a probe against officials from the local court where the compromise decree was filed.

“The 5th respondent, the registrar of the court (Court of Small Causes Bengaluru), is directed to institute a police investigation in this serious matter and cause a domestic enquiry against the suspect officials of the court, since fraud, forgery and fabrication ordinarily do not happen without the involvement of insiders,” it said.

As forged documents and fraudulent orders by senior officers have put the government on the defensive, the Revenue Department has, for the first time, introduced a standard operating procedure (SOP) that uses forensic tools to detect and check deception during the ongoing digitisation drive under the Bhu-Suraksha Project. Over 100 crore documents across Karnataka will be scanned, verified and uploaded into a secure server to prevent any further tampering. 

Encroached lands

While the owners of private land fight to protect their property, government departments wake up years or decades later. Take, for instance, the attempt to grab land belonging to the 9th-century Nageshwara Temple at Begur in Bengaluru, a site whose hero stones and inscriptions have opened a window to the history of the capital city.  

The temple authorities, under the Muzrai department, are contesting illegal claims over 25 acres of land in two survey numbers (12 and 17). However, there is no attempt to save the temple land in adjacent survey numbers 13 and 15 because the alleged encroacher is connected to a sitting minister.

Syed Mustafa and other activists of Karnataka Rashtra Samithi, who submitted a petition to the revenue department and temple authorities to save the temple land, have now been made to fight a legal case. They have been named respondents in a civil suit filed by Samiualla K S and Gulab Jan K S seeking to establish claims over the land.

“We are not the owners of the land. It is the government which has to fight to save the urban common. However, we are forced to fight its battle. Samiualla also claims ownership of land in survey number 15. This area also includes 2 acres and 13 guntas of ‘B’ Kharab land (non-cultivable government land) which cannot be granted. We are essentially fighting the fight of the government because there is absolutely no interest in protecting the commons,” said Raghupathi Bhat, general secretary of the party.

Bengaluru Urban Deputy Commissioner G Jagadeesha said he has directed the tahsildar concerned to submit a report on the matter. “As per the preliminary information from field officers, there are some pending court cases. Once I get the report from the tahsildar, we will have clarity on the matter, including the allegations of illegal grant,” he said.

Official connivance 

Illegal grants, tampering of records, insertion of names into old registers are at the root of the big scams. Such official connivance draws the line that separates encroachment from systematic attempts at land grabbing. Such incidents have been exposed repeatedly, with the Task Force for Recovery of Public Land and its Protection chaired by V Balasubramanian in 2011, flagging a landmark case.

The chairman had ordered an inquiry against the special deputy commissioner, Bengaluru Urban district, who had passed illegal orders in 428 cases within a span of two years, causing a loss of 1,042 acres of government land on the outskirts of Bengaluru. “The Regional Commissioner constituted 18 teams of revenue auditors to examine each of these 428 cases and submitted a report in February 2011 that in none of these cases the original documents were examined and government lands were conferred on the claimants merely on the basis of entries in the RTC forms and mutation entries, etc,” Balasubramanian’s report said.

In another scam, involving transferable development rights (TDR), limited land availability in the city’s centre made fraudsters go vertical. TDR is issued to people as compensation for acquiring their land. In this 2014 case, TDR certificates worth over Rs 27 crore were issued to beneficiaries who never parted with their land.

Tier-2 cities like Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad and Mangaluru are also witnessing such cases, thanks to the realty boom in the last 20 years. In the now-famous Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) scam, the one-man commission gave a clean chit to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah but pointed out several issues in the decisions taken by the MUDA authorities, including the development and allotment of denotified land.  

Hubballi-Dharwad Urban Development Authority (HDUDA) chairman Shakir Sanadi said at least eight parcels of land allotted by the authority were protected from such scams recently. “Land without legal heirs, sites with owners staying abroad, land parcels purchased when Aadhaar linking and digitisation were not there and those without proper documents are prone to such frauds. Land grabbers identify such sites and try to sell them,” he said. 

Political economy 

The administration often comes down hard on the poor who use land for housing or cultivation. The exceptions are the encroachers who become part of the political economy, as seen in the Bagair Hukum cases. The revenue department is well aware of such attempts.

In August 2023, the department took an unprecedented step and sent a 13-member team to Kadur and Mudigere taluks of Chikkamagaluru district to look into illegal allotments.

In Kadur, the team probed 3,685 mutation entries related to grants and found problems in 2,243 (60%) cases involving a total of 5,238 acres of land. 

A confidential report by the team not only named officials (village accountants to tahsildars) responsible for the irregularities, but also listed the irregularities directly attributed to the Bagair Hukum Committee led at various periods of time by Y S V Datta, B L Prakash, Belli Prakash and C T Ravi. They were held responsible for 252 cases (719 acres), 141 cases (271 acres), 139 cases (251 acres) and 32 (80 acres), respectively. 

In Mudigere, the team looked into 2,105 cases, of which they found problems in 1,961 cases involving 5,360 acres. The Bagair Hukum committee headed at various periods by M P Kumarswamy, Motamma and B B Ningaiah was held responsible for an illegal allotment of 483 acres. As many as 15 tahsildars were named for the illegal allotment in over 3,000 acres.

Digital mapping 

Rajender Kumar Kataria, Principal Secretary, Revenue Department acknowledged the challenges and said the root of the problem lies in the lack of proper documentation, which has put the department on the defensive and often in a disadvantageous position.

“That realisation was a key instrument in conceiving the government’s Bhu-Suraksha project. This is not mere digitisation of over 100 crore pages of records. We have geo-fenced government lands and introduced a beat system where field officers periodically check government land parcels,” he said.

Scanning, indexing and cataloguing may seem like dry work, but with soaring land prices, a box of old documents could be worth over Rs 50 crore. Hence the scanning and verification process is done under the surveillance of closed-circuit (CCTV) cameras. Through digitisation, the department hopes to check tampering and forgery, the two biggest threats. 

What happens when the existing records are already flagged? The department has developed a detailed SOP with forensic procedures. It starts with visual assessment of the paper type, state logo, official seals, typewriter and type face, pen type and ink mismatch among others. Forensic examination under ultraviolet light, use of specialised software and checks on digital documents for forgery are among the methods suggested for further analysis.

A senior official said while digitisation cannot completely stop irregularities, the digital trail will serve as a deterrent. “Grabbing government land has become tougher now compared to a decade ago. However, no step is foolproof. Someone who is conniving will factor in the cost involved in such malpractice. Also, they know they can get away with the help of politicians or legal procedures,” he said, adding that speedy conviction of fraudulent officials remains the best deterrent.

With regard to accountability, Kataria said a total of 269 disciplinary cases have been taken against revenue authorities — from village accountants to assistant commissioners.

“We are also planning a separate portal to track cases against officials. Sometimes, a show cause notice is issued to an officer and then the system forgets it. The portal will ensure time-bound action so that every case reaches its logical conclusion,” he said.