Ground Battle

In the backdrop of the Adarsh society scam,Newsline brings to you pictures of various illegal encroachments that have come up on defence land,compromising the security of vital defence installations in some cases.

In a press conference earlier this month,Vice-Admiral Sanjeev Bhasin,Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command,had admitted that many parts of Navy land was encroached upon,giving the example of Geetanagar slums and Sunder Nagar slums in Colaba. Sunder Nagar is close to a helicopter gunship base,while Geeta Nagar is close to the naval base.

Bhasin was the first to expose the Adarsh scam when wrote a letter to the Delhi-based Army Headquarters and the defence ministry seeking action against the 31-storey building for posing a threat to military installations in Mumbai.

“There is naval land in Kalyan which we are not able to utilise as it is being used for cultivation purposes by the local villagers. Initially,it belonged to the Indian Air Force and later was transferred to the state government and then to the Indian Navy,” Bhasin said.

The problem also persists in Ganeshmurti Nagar in Cuffe Parade,where encroachers are squatting on land owned by the Indian Army and a vast stretch of land near the INS Shikra,Western Naval Command’s helibase in Colaba.

While Bhasin said the Navy has already requested the Maharashtra government to rehabilitate and relocate the slum dwellers under its Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) schemes,SRA chief S S Zende said that there is no policy of the central government for its rehabilitating squatter on its land. “We need to act under a certain policy of the Central government by which we can build SRA houses on their land. We have asked them for formulating a policy in this regard many times. Without this we cannot do anything,” said Zende.

Former chief minister Ashok Chavan had said in April that slums on Central land,including railway and defence land,have been told to follow the state’s SRA policy and carry out development. However,no progress has happened on this front so far.

The problem has led the Navy to ask the Director General of Defence Estates to conduct a thorough scrutiny of defence land records in Mumbai and start acquiring them back.

The Defence Ministry has admitted that around 11,052 acres of its 17.30 lakh acres of land across the country has been encroached or occupied illegally.