The ministry on Monday issued a written instruction to the Department of Survey to form a probe committee immediately to investigate into the case. Similarly, CIAA has also initiated its investigation. [break]
"We have written to the Department of Survey to immediately form a probe committee to investigate the transfer of 32 ropanis of public land to individual ownership," said the ministry´s spokesman Krishna Bahadur Raut. "The department will form a probe panel and initiate the process to freeze further transaction of the land," he added.
Director General at the department Nagendra Jha informed that the department had already started investigation before receiving instruction from the ministry. "I have written to the concerned section to send the files related to the transactions to the department. Once the documents are here, we will form a proe committee," Jha added.
The investigations were initiated after after Republica broke the news in its Monday edition.
CIAA spokesperson Ishwari Prasad Paudyal said the commission has directed the concerned section to start investigation as per secretary´s instruction.
The then Number 6 Goshwara office at Basundhara, the Department of Survey and Survey Office, Dillibazar seem to have colluded to transfer the public land to private ownership. The transferred land falls under the jurisdiction of Survey office Chabahil, which should have issued the land ownership certificates. But it was the Survey Office Dillibazar which issued the certificates, in collusion with the land mafia.
According to a source, the Goshwara office, established to revise the land map of the Kathmandu Valley had transferred the public land worth over 1.5 billion rupees to the private ownership while upgrading the Valley map.
Although the land ownership certificates have been issued in individuals´ names, the Goshwara map says the land was river bed land exposed after river changed course.
The map at the Survey office Chabahil has mentioned the plots as public land.
It has been learnt that the then Director General (DG) of the Department of Survey Toyanath Baral and Acting Director General Hridaya Narayan Mishra had given their consent to Goshwara to upgrade the map.
As per the field book at Department of Survey in Chabahil, the then survey officers Prakash Joshi and Magnu Dutta; survey team leader Sanjay Kumar Thakur and surveyor Harenda Dev had signed the upgraded map.
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