Kavre, December 30

More than 500 families of Bhumlutar and Phalate VDCs have been deprived of their land ownership certificates for more than four decades in Kavre.

Owners of hundreds of ropani of cultivable land have been living without ownership certificates as then Pipaltar VDC split into Bhumlutar and Phalate VDCs due to dispute in the course of land survey in 1975. As the locals of both the VDCs clashed over the ownership of cultivable land, the survey team returned to the capital, depriving the locals of ownership documents.

Govinda Upreti, former state minister for Labour and a local, said that the villagers had been deprived of the land ownership certificates due to the dispute regarding boundary delineation as long as four decades ago. As the dispute over possession of the fertile plain land at Patikhola and Phalatekhola intensified, Upreti had snatched the land ownership certificate from the survey team.

According to Magnu Datta, chief of District Survey Office Kavre, a team from the office has been working to settle the dispute over boundary for the past one year. He said field work was being carried out in order to finalise the ownership.

However, the work has not been able to pick up pace due to the deadly April 25 earthquake, said Datta.

Bhumlutar locals had forwarded a proposal requesting the availability of land ownership certificates to the Ministry of Land Reform earlier. Officials at the Ministry of Land Reform in coordination with District Survey Office and the Department of Survey have been preparing to provide the locals with land ownership certificates within this year.