More than 6,500 land dispute cases in various court of Lucknow and about 26,866 cases in revenue courts of Uttar Pradesh are pending.
An exercise to ascertain this number was undertaken after the Deoria violence in which six persons were killed due to property dispute.
According to official sources, a number of litigants are fighting land cases for over 20 years without any decision while some cases are so old that the original plaintiff is not alive and his next generation is fighting the case.
“Based on the nature of dispute, the case goes in the court of tehsildar, then before the SDM, the DM, the divisional commissioner and Revenue Board before going to the high court and the Supreme Court. It takes a lot of time to get a judgement in land dispute cases,” said Mukesh Singh, a Congress corporator.
Advocate Ravish Singh said, “You will agree that there is a huge pendency of cases before the competent authorities. No one can be blamed for this because delivering justice on land matters is not an easy task.”
He further said, “Revenue officials are never serious about solving land disputes due to which a large number of Deoria-like incidents take place. Chances of such crimes are maximum in a city where officials sit on files for months and where officials keep delaying cases.”
Divisional commissioner Roshan Jacob has directed officials to list all land related cases and resolve them on priority and asked officials to plan conservation of water bodies/ponds, besides checking encroachments on government land.
The divisional commissioner also asked officers to make a list of land disputes and get them resolved on priority basis, as directed by the chief minister.
Municipal commissioner Inderjeet Singh informed the divisional commissioner that 361 ponds of LMC area had been surveyed and taken over by the civic body and necessary action was being taken for the renovation of ponds.
“Ponds freed from encroachers should be developed by the LMC as picnic spots so that revenue can be generated for their maintenance. All cases of land disputes must be resolved soon,” Jacob reiterated.
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