Govt losing control of abandoned properties

The government has been losing control of huge abandoned properties worth crores of taka due to 'unreasonable delay' in initiating legal moves to recover them.
Most land cases filed by the government are facing dismissals at the higher court because of the delay, since there are no satisfactory reasons behind such delay. As a result, the government losing control of abandoned properties, government law officers said.
Recently, the government has taken an initiative to file a writ petition with the High Court (HC) with a view to recovering the House No. 1/22, Block-D, Mohammadpur in the city 22 years after an individual took its possession.
This abandoned property was allocated to one Abdur Rahim following a judgement of the court of settlement in 1987.
On February 22 this year, the Housing and Public Works Ministry sent a letter to the Attorney General's office through the Solicitor's office to file a writ petition challenging the legality of the judgement of the court of settlement.
Although the court of settlement in Dhaka delivered the verdict on December 27, 1987 ordering allotment of the property to Abdur Rahim, no previous governments took any initiative to challenge the judgement, sources said.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General's office has sent the file back to the ministry, fearing that the government might face an embarrassing situation at the High Court rather than getting the expected result if the petition is filed after so many years.
In addition, Additional Attorney General M Enayetur Rahim has sent a letter to the state minister for housing and public works to take punitive action against those responsible for making the delay in taking the decision of filing the writ petition.
He told The Daily Star that there are thousands of cases in which the government is being defeated at the High Court and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, since there is no satisfactory explanation of such delay.
In the letter, Enayetur Rahim said that only a photocopy of the judgment of the court of settlement has been sent to the Attorney General's office, but other relevant documents have not been sent.
Although there is no specific time limit for filing any writ petition, it is a recognised rule that such petitions should be filed without any delay after the lower court orders, he said in the letter.
In 1986, the government had issued a gazette notification along with a list of abandoned properties, stating that anybody can get back the lands, subject to proving his or her ownership of the abandoned properties in the court.
Sources said about 90 percent of such cases are being declared dismissed at the higher court, since the dates of the case proceedings expired long ago.
The cases are not being moved in time due to the interference of the middlemen, they added.
Enayetur Rahim has also recently sent some land related cases to the solicitor's office, saying that it will be a futile exercise to file any writ petition against the decision of the court of settlement.