Curation Team
NAGPUR: Revenue minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Friday announced that proposals would be fast-tracked to grant land ownership rights to nearly 40,000 Bengali families in Gadchiroli who originally came here from East Pakistan after partition.
This comes as a big relief for descendants of those who had to flee East Pakistan and rebuilt their lives on land for which they never got ownership. TOI had reported earlier how govt intervention helped families from West Pakistan get land ownership documents.
Bawankule said that the district collector was directed to prepare the proposal on priority so that ownership transfer, pending for decades, could finally be resolved.
Bawankule said, “As per our records, there are 40,000 Bengali families here who have not yet got ownership transferred in their names. I have asked the district collector to move a proposal regarding this, and we will expedite it.” He added that the state govt was committed to providing property cards to all residents.
The minister said that drones would be used for land survey mapping across Gadchiroli to ensure precision and transparency in measurements. “This will accurately help in land measurement and documentation,” Bawankule said. He also acknowledged the shortage of staff in the land records department and said, “We will now hire private workers to complete the land measurement exercise speedily.”
The Bengali families in Gadchiroli trace their roots to erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Six decades ago, thousands of refugees were rehabilitated by the govt in this district.
Bawankule also announced that a Lok Adalat is being planned to settle revenue-related cases in Gadchiroli. The special mechanism will allow disputes involving ownership, encroachments, and record mismatches to be resolved outside conventional courtrooms.
The minister said the govt’s focus was to balance welfare with efficiency, by both clearing long-pending cases and upgrading technology to speed up record-keeping. “We are determined to provide ownership rights to all eligible families and ensure there are no further delays,” he said.
