Context: The Jammu and Kashmir government on October 31 declared all the actions taken under the Jammu and Kashmir State Land (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001, also known as the Roshni Act, under which 20 lakh kanals of land was to be transferred to existing occupants, as “null and void”.

• It has left thousands of mostly poor people in the Union territory defrauded and terrified of possible homelessness.

Background

• The Roshni scheme initially envisaged conferment of proprietary rights of around 20.55 lakh kanals of land (1,2,50 hectares) to occupants of which 15.85 per cent of land was approved for vesting of ownership rights.
• In 2001, when the Roshni Act was enacted by the then J&K government led by Farooq Abdullah, people who had encroached on state-owned land were sold ownership rights to the land. 
• Some of these people then sold tracts of the land they had purchased to mostly poor people and rapid construction took place in every corner of J&K.
• Corruption issues: In its 2014 report, the CAG termed the scheme a Rs-25,000-crore scam. 
• In October 2018, then Jammu & Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik had pronounced the law “no longer relevant” because it had “failed to realise the desired objectives and there were also reports of misuse of some its provisions”.
• Earlier, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court pronounced the Roshni Act “completely unconstitutional, contrary to law and unsustainable” and ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe on the “land scam” enabled by the law.

Jammu and Kashmir State Land (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001- The Roshni Act

• It sought to regularise unauthorised land.
• Anybody who had grabbed this land in the past, could now come to the government, make an application and pay a certain fee. 
• Once the fee was paid, the land or property would be regularised in the hands of the owner.
• The J&K government then said they would collect fees to the tune of roughly Rs 25,000 crore, which would then be used to upgrade the region’s electricity generation, thus bringing “roshni” into the lives of the Kashmiris.
• However, in 2014, a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) found irregularities in the transfer of the encroached land to occupants from 2007 to 2013.
• Later on, the J&K governor repealed the Roshni Act.