Probe to trace lissing land bill

PUDUCHERRY: The missing of a Bill to regulate land conversion, ‘Pondicherry Natural Land Resource Conservation bill’,  formulated in 2000 for tabling in the Legislative Assembly, which subsequently went missing from official files, would be investigated. This assurance was given by Secretary Agriculture, Belatee Pertin, when the issue was raised at an open house conducted by the Agriculture department as part of Vigilance Awareness Week.When participants raised the issue of large scale conversion of agricultural land for real estate purposes, additional director Jaishankar in charge of land use board (LUB)   said that unauthorised layouts that had by-passed the LUB were coming up and there was no legal framework to regulate them. Though a bill was formulated, it could later not be traced. The LUB was an advisory body and had been providing support based on rules and regulations formulated by the government.The participants cited instances where approvals had been given in violation of the rules. They said that there was blatant  misuse of land conversion rules by some officials of the department  who were hand in glove with unscrupulous real estate agents.