Sindhuli, May 11

His happiness knew no bounds when Indra Bahadur Gurmachhan of Sindhuli, Bhuwaneshwori-1, finally got a land ownership certificate for the land he has been using for decades.

He had been demanding the document for the past 45 years after a team from the survey department back then did not issue a land ownership certificate for the land identifying it as a non-registered land.

Thus, he had been using the land without any land ownership certificate ever since.

“We had been using the land but didn’t have any land ownership certificate due to which we were not able to sell the land earlier ,” said Gurmachhane. Further, he hoped that now that he had the land ownership certificate he would get the government grant for reconstruction of his house.

“Earlier, I feared the government should miss us out on the grant given due to lack of the mandatory land ownership certificate, but now I’m happy at the prospect of getting the grant amount to rebuild my house, which was damaged by the earthquake,” he said.

Like Gurmachhane, Indra Bahadur Karki, 45, of Bhuwaneshwori got the land ownership certificate recently.

“Thank god after 45 years, I’ve got the certificate,” he said.

In fact, it was not only Gurmachhane and Karki who got land ownership certificate for their land recently, as 29 others from the village also got the certificate today from the hands of Land Reform State Minister Bikram Thapa at a programme here today.

According to Chhatra Bahadur Lungeli, chief at the district land revenue office of Sindhuli, five others are yet to get land ownership certificates in the village development committee.

“Of the 36 families, we provided certificates to 31 today. The others will receive them later,” he said

He added that the certificates were distributed for the land, which was earlier deemed not suitable for providing certificates by following necessary formalities.