Scams prompt survey of 16,000 acres of defence land

233-A Lohegaon, 8 A Lothian Road. This is arguably the city’s own small parallel to Adarsh and Sukna scams that prompted the need for better management of defence land. The exercise is, in fact, in the offing.

After digitisation of land records, a project to survey, demarcate and verify the status of 16,000 acres of military land in Pune district, besides seven other districts, has been undertaken by the Defence Estates Office (DEO), Pune Circle. The survey is part of a larger national project by the Directorate General of Defence Estates (DGDE).

G S Rajeswaran, DEO, Pune Circle told The Indian Express, “We started the survey in the last week of September and it is expected to cross to 2014. There are two kinds of defence lands; the General Land Register, the survey of which is under cantonment boards, and Military Land Register surveyed by DEOs.”

The DEO Pune Circle has stations spread over eight districts including Pune, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Sangli, Kolhapur and Sindhudurg covering 58,000 acres of defence land. Three teams of the DEO with assistance from the State Revenue Department have taken up primary tasks pertaining to the defence land survey such as obtaining details,verifying total Defence land and authenticating it on the ground, seeking information on disputed lands and encroachments and constructing boundary pillars wherever necessary. This data will be compiled, and a computerised database created.

The Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) has 2,012 acres under it, a GPS-aided survey of which is

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