Land earlier sanctioned to governmnet, given to private individual

MANGALORE:Strange but true. Two acres of land sanctioned for a government school has beengiven to a private individual under Akrama Sakrama scheme. This casehas come to the notice of the Department of Public Instructions (DPI) officialsin Biliyur village in Sullia taluk. Now the land holder has approached the courtafter officials issued him the notice. Earlier, it was observed thatthe land had been encroached. "But later we come to know that entire landsanctioned for the school had been transferred to the encroacher by the AkramaSakrama committee," said the DPI officials. In another case,officials are struggling to vacate an encroacher who has devoured nine cents oflands to construct a house in Bhutakallu. In both cases theencroachers have taken full benefit of the absence of Right of TenancyCertificate (RTC) in the name of the schools. At present the school is being runin a building constructed at a donated land in Biliyur. This is notthe only such case. According to the officials there are as many as 156government schools in the district that do not possess RTC for their lands.Bantwal taluk has the highest number of 46 schools that have no RTC for theirproperty, followed by Mangalore that has 45 schools. In Mangalore city, 26schools have not yet received the RTC for their land. Besides, 12 in Puttur, 11in Belthangady and 9 schools in Sullia do not possess RTC. Absence of RTCencourages encroachment. It is quite difficult to vacate the tenants. It isdifficult to take up development works if the encroachers approach the court,say officials.RTC related problems with schools has been on for thepast 20 years. Accusing the revenue department officials, DPI officials saidrevenue officials have to survey the land, earmark the boundaries and submit thereport to issue RTCs. However, the amount of interest they show in surveyingprivate lands is not shown in surveying government school property. This was theprime reason why the government schools have failed to obtain RTC for such along time, they said.