Government preparing to establish powerful body to look after public land capture issues’

Kathmandu / Apr 27: Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, Padma Aryal, has said preparations are underway to form a high-powered investigation commission to bring back encroached and seized government and public land to the government ownership.

Speaking at a face-to-face programme organised by the Reporters Club Nepal here today, the minister said the government was working to return the government and public land captured unlawfully to the rightful owners. The same commission will be given the right to look after disputes regarding the government, public and Guthi land, according to the minister.

“The lesson learned from the case related to the controversy surrounding the Lalita Niwas land purchase is that complaints regarding the encroachment and capture of public land should be investigated. The Inland Revenue Office, Dilli Bazar has ceased the sale and purchases of over 450 plots of land for an inquiry into the issues related to the Lalita Niwas land purchase dispute,” the minister informed. Stating that the land plots in the area around Lalita Niwas have been put on hold for any transactions based on the report submitted by the investigation committee, the Minister for Land Management said that the dossiers related to the land plot numbers 1024 and 1025 are missing and it is the responsibility of the government to find out the other land plots whose records have been placed in these dossiers.

She said the registration of 98 per cent of the land plots in the area have been ascertained by matching the landownership papers and the computer records before putting these land plots on hold.

The government had formed a committee to look into the dispute over the land ownership of the Lalita Niwas area. The minister said that among the land put on hold includes the plot of land said to have been bought by Nabin Poudel, the son of Nepal Communist Party (NCP) general secretary Bishnu Poudel.

She said the government was moving ahead with a commitment to stop such irregularities and encroachment of public land. RSS