Surveying of enemy properties in U.P. likely to speed up

Earlier in November, during a meeting of the State Home department, U.P. CM Yogi Adityanath issued guidelines to ensure the security of such properties located in different districts

With the Centre having launched a survey to identify enemy properties across the country as a precursor to monetising them, Uttar Pradesh — where a large number of these properties are located — is preparing to speed up its own survey, removing encroachments and assessing the value of such properties in the State.

Enemy properties are those once owned by people who took Pakistani or Chinese citizenship after India’s wars with those countries. The Enemy Property Act, 1968 enables the appropriation of such properties, with ownership passing to the Custodian of Enemy Property for India (CEPI), a department of the Home Ministry.

The U.P. government has sent a list of such properties to the districts where they are located, in order to assess their value. U.P. officials are also removing temporary encroachments or occupancy of these properties, so that they can be auctioned in the future.

“We are working on a two prompt strategy. Some of the properties are under litigation and some of the properties were not followed properly by the Custodian of Enemy Properties for India (CEPI) office,” Pragya Pandey, Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Bakshi Ka Talab in Lucknow, told The Hindu. “We are targeting such properties which are devoid of any litigation and which can be easily taken up and could be ready for being monetised. We are in the process of sending the monetised value of such properties [to CEPI], so they can be auctioned,” the official added.

About 2,250 out of the 5,936 existing enemy properties located in U.P. are occupied. Of these, 1,467 such properties are occupied by a mafia or by illegal occupants. Co-occupants have taken over 369 enemy properties, while 424 of them are occupied by tenants who have been given the properties on rent at nominal rates by successive State governments.

Also read | 30% of ‘enemy properties’ in Uttar Pradesh are illegally occupied, shows government data

Out of 361 enemy properties in the State capital of Lucknow alone, 105 are occupied by tenants who got them on lease at a very minimal rate. Likewise in Muzaffarnagar, out of 274 such properties, 85 are occupied by tenants.