Set up house committee to probe into state land encroachments: Sham Sharma

Jammu, Feb 17: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA and former minister Sham Sharma on Tuesday demanded that a House committee should be constituted to probe into the issue of encroachment of state land as it involved big and influential people, including politicians, bureaucrats and technocrats.

Sham, while speaking to the reporters outside the Legislature, described the encroachment as a very serious issue.

“Today I received a reply to my question which revealed that over 17 lakh kanals of land was encroached in J&K – over 14 lakh kanals of land in Jammu region and over 3 lakh kanals of land in Kashmir region. They (government) claimed that around 14 lakh kanals of land was retrieved also. This is a very serious issue, which needs to be probed,” BJP MLA said.

“One can understand the land occupied by the poor landless people. Generally, they (poor) construct houses after paying money to influential people. But why was the government shielding big sharks? The questions which could provide startling information to the people, deliberately, in connivance with the government, are placed at the tail end,” he alleged.

Referring to BJP MLA Vikram Randhawa’s issue, Sham alleged that the treasury benches were deliberately trying to make it a Hindu-Muslim issue.

“So, as a senior member I intervened. Our BJP MLA clarified his stance that he did not target any specific yet he (Randhawa) showed magnanimity stating that he would retract if record proved use of any such expression,” Sham asserted.