MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2024
VITHALDAS HEGDE
PANJIM: In the ongoing struggle by homeowners against the de facto ‘snatching’ of their properties by the stringent Custodian of Enemy Properties for India (CEPI), there is a professor who met the fate, and has been unable to get the “enemy property” tag in spite of a favourable order from the High Court.
The professor has now written a letter to the North Goa Collector seeking to strike off the remark put by the Revenue Department that the said property is “Enemy Property and that no transaction be allowed”.
The petitioner had purchased a plot at Assagao, Bardez in 2007 from the son of a woman, who died in Pakistan. In 2020, he discovered that by an order sometime in 2010, the survey authorities corrected/mutated the survey record by invoking the provisions of Section 103 of the Goa Land Revenue Code, 1968, and included in the survey record, the name of the Custodian of Enemy Property for India (CEPI) as against the property.
Aggrieved by the decision, the petitioner approached the High Court of Bombay at Goa, challenging the order dated October 8, 2010, by the CEPI under the relevant sections of the Enemy Property Act, 1968 by pointing out that neither the son, who sold the property nor he was aware of such order and that they were not served with any notice before effecting the alleged correction/mutation.
Based on the Sale Deed, the mutation was carried out in the survey records in 2007 and the petitioner’s name was included in the occupants’ column as per the Goa Land Revenue Code, 1968.
The High Court had observed that there were no details as to when the woman was alleged to have migrated and whether she, at any stage, gave up her Indian citizenship and acquired Pakistani citizenship.
However, the CEPI is in no mood to settle the applicant’s claims and restore his name in the Revenue records of the subject property by deleting the existing mutation entry standing in the name of Enemy Property for India. It has written to the State government not to decide until the Enemy Property Act investigation proceedings are concluded.
A case like this is yet another case in point that in its effort to ensure that properties of Pakistani citizens are earmarked and taken over, there is no unfairness meted out to genuine Indian buyers of those properties.
