The land under the then Lalita Residence in Baluwatar has currently dominated the headlines.
The probe committee formed under former secretary Sharada Prasad Trital has concluded that the majority of government land there has been transferred to individuals.
The then king Mahendra after the coup in 1961 had confiscated 14 ropanis out of the 299 ropanis of Nepali Congress leader Suvarna Shumsher Rana and his family inside Lalita Residence. The government four years later acquired 285 ropanis of Rana's land in Baluwatar by paying compensation, the Trital committee has found.
The committee's report states that the government land inside Lalita Residence reached to different individuals due to Cabinet decisions under many prime ministers. It has recommended that the land should be taken back by revoking a few of those Cabinet decisions.
The committee, however, did not mention the individuals and the time when they got the land transferred to their names as it was not in its terms of reference.
The committee still has identified CPN leader in Nawalparasi Shova Kanta Dhakal and advocate Ram Kumar Subedi as land mafia. Members in the Trital committee have said advocate Subedi had been working as attorney of the Rana family and acting on the family's behalf since 1992.
Dhakal and Subedi still own the largest proportion of the grabbed land in Baluwatar. Many plots have been transferred to other individuals through them. Eight annas of such land had been transferred to son of CPN General Secretary Bishnu Paudel.
The media has excavated additional information now. Different ministers, politicians and staffers at different times have maneuvered since 1992 to grab the land. But the complete picture has yet to emerge.
The Nepali people has every right to know the complete facts and truth about the level of wrongdoings in transfer of government land including that inside the prime minister's official residence to different individuals.
The government, therefore, should form a powerful judicial commission to investigate all these things and to find out the guilty who worked with bad intention, the roles played by different persons to grab the government land, and to bring them all to book.
The Trital committee's report states that the government land of Baluwatar has been grabbed by stepping on the decision by the then Krishna Prasad Bhattarai Cabinet but without completing the due procedures the Cabinet prescribed.
Naya Patrika daily on Tuesday has reported that Nepali Congress (NC) President and the then home minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had written to the Land Revenue Office in Dilli Bazar to implement the Cabinet decision of 1990. What exactly he had written in the letter has yet to be revealed and we are yet to know whether he had written the letter in accordance to the law or in violation.
What instruction did the home minister give must be revealed as all the wrongdoings in the land grab has been carried out through the Land Revenue Office in Dilli Bazar. Deuba must be punished if he has violated the laws. Nobody should be spared of a grave crime like illegally transferring ownership of government land to individuals.
The government land of Baluwatar seems to have been grabbed in two rounds: the first from 1992 to just before the king's direct rule in 2005, and the second from 2010-2013.
Almost 35 ropanis of land seems to have been registered by Subarna Shumsher Rana's family to their name and transferred to others in the first round. Some of the land was transferred to those outside the Rana family by creating fake tenants and guthis.
Members of the Trital committee say Dhakal and Subedi, identified as the land mafia by the committee, got a lot of land transferred to their names from 2002-2004. Record at the Land Revenue Office in Dilli Bazar shows they transferred ownership of eight annas out of that land to Paudel's son Navin on June 11, 2004.
Dhakal and Subedi engineered Cabinet decisions on April 11, 2010 and May 14 that year to acquire land outside the prime minister's residence in place of the land they claimed they owned inside the residence when Madhav Kumar Nepal was the prime minister. They then transferred land of guthis, road and public land to their name after those decisions, according to the Trital committee.
The Trital committee states that the two also got a fake Pashupati Tikinchha Guthi recognized by the Cabinet on September 30, 2012 when Baburam Bhattarai was the prime minister. The two acquired additional land by creating fake tenants of the fake guthi.
The Trital committee has called some of these decisions illegal and demanded their revocation.
There must be investigation on how Dhakal and Subedi could engineer illegal decisions by influencing the prime ministers and council of ministers at different times, who helped them in getting that access, and which politicians are accomplices in this grave crime.
The government has written to the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority to investigate the staffers involved, and the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police for politicians and others as per the report of Trital committee.
We do not have confidence in the Nepal Police to investigate the scam implicating as many as three former prime ministers and some former ministers, and take it to conclusion. Political parties can stoop to any level to save their respective leaders. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and government spokesperson Gokul Prasad Baskota have already spoken to defend Paudel. Chances that NC will also look to save its president have increased now that Deuba has also been dragged in the scam.
The government should, therefore, form a powerful judicial commission for complete investigation of the land grab and to recommend punishments for the guilty to guarantee that the parties do not connive to save their respective leaders.
If the current KP Sharma Oli government does not initiate investigation in connivance with CPN and opposition leaders, the ultimate blame for trying to cover up this scam will also fall in this government.
We are confident that the government understands that initiating investigations instead of taking that blame is in the interest of the country as well as the government.
