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Jammu and Kashmir administration decided to annul all actions taken under the Roshni land scheme and announced that it will cancel mutations and retrieve all land sanctioned under the scheme within six months.

The decision has come three weeks after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court ordered a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in the Roshni land scheme.

Roshni Act

• The Roshni Act envisaged the transfer of ownership rights of state land to its occupants, subject to the payment of a cost, as determined by the government.
• It was enacted by Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah’s government, and it set 1990 as the cutoff for encroachment on state land.
• The government’s target was to earn Rs 25,000 crore by transferring 20 lakh kanals of state land to existing occupants against payment at market rates.

Amendments

• In 2005, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-Congress government relaxed the cutoff year to 2004.
• During the tenure of Ghulam Nabi Azad, the cutoff was relaxed further to 2007.
• The government also gave ownership rights of agricultural land to farmers occupying it for free, charging them only Rs 100 per kanal as documentation fee.

Latest Update

• The decision to repeal the Roshni Act came after demands from IkkJutt Jammu, a hardline Hindu group set up recently by one Ankur Sharma, an advocate.
• Sharma, who was instrumental in setting up the Hindu Ekta Manch to support the accused in the gangrape and murder of the 8-year-old Bakerwal girl in January, had in 2014 approached the High Court seeking court-monitored investigations into the transfer of land under the Act. 

Source: Indian Express