Leader of ruling CPN Bhim Rawal has demanded fair investigation of Baluwatar land grab and action against those found guilty.
Speaking in a program organized in Kathmandu on Monday, former deputy prime minister Rawal demanded impartial investigation of encroachment of public land across the country.
Rawal, who was in the then Madhav Kumar Nepal government that took decisions in 2010 to facilitate Baluwatar land grab, reiterated that there was no formal proposal and discussion in the Cabinet meeting to take those decisions.
"That public land of a sensitive place like Baluwatar has been transferred to individuals is objectionable. The guilty must be punished after finding facts and truth. Let's wait for the conclusion of government investigations," Rawal stated about the land grab that has implicated even CPN General Secretary Bishnu Paudel.
Rawal had also earlier told Setopati that the two decisions taken by the then Nepal led Cabinet in 2010 to facilitate Baluwatar land grab were not taken through the Cabinet meeting.
"I have no knowledge that such proposal had come to the Cabinet," Rawal, who was home minister, in that Cabinet had said. "I take the proposals brought to the Cabinet seriously and I am someone who goes to the Cabinet meeting after reading all the proposals. But I do not remember the proposal of providing land for those who claim to own land inside the prime minister's residence coming to the Cabinet."
CPN General Secretary Paudel has been dragged in the encroachment of government land in Baluwatar with eight annas of the grabbed land transferred in the name of his son Navin.
The government had formed the probe committee under former secretary Sharada Prasad Trital following complaints that government land at Baluwatar has been transferred to some individuals. The committee had submitted the report to the government in December 2018 concluding that the land transferred to individuals belonged to the government.
The committee had advised the government to ask the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police to investigate how ownership of the land was transferred to individuals and investigate the state of such government land across the country.
The committee stated that the then king Mahendra after the coup in 1961 had confiscated 14 ropanis land of Nepali Congress leader Suvarna Shumsher Rana and his father Kanchan Shumsher in Baluwatar. The government four years later acquired 285 ropanis of Rana's land in Baluwatar by paying compensation.
The PM's residence, chief justice's residence, speaker's residence and the central office of Nepal Rastra Bank are currently situated in 172 ropanis out of that 285 ropanis.
Land mafia in connivance with staffers at the Land Revenue Office has transferred ownership of the remaining 113 ropanis of land to different individuals, the committee has concluded. The land owned by Paudel is out of that 113 ropanis.
