I am not legal person to judge this. This blog is just to introspect ourselves from an human point of view.
How the Slum Come Up
There are some vacant lands in the city which are not in a great shape and no one cares about the neatness of this place. No government authority does any development work in this area or any private owner place a board as private property. Now, a group of villagers or nomads or wanderers come to the city for a living and see the vacant place, construct some hut, and start to live. No one questions them or takes possession of this place for years together. In such a scenario, the occupiers assume this to be a no-man's land and take claim for this property. Some of this group members go in search of jobs in other cities and tend to sell this property to the incoming villagers or laborers.
Are They Legal
A legal expert can give a correct opinion, but from a slum dwellers point of view, he has bought the land from his previous owner for a premium. So, technically he has not occupied someone's land for free. He has been paying the taxes to the government in the form of commercial taxes for every product he buys in the market, so he is a tax paying citizen. He has been living in the same place for 40 to 50 years, i.e., almost 2 generations. It was a no-man's land for 40 to 50 years and suddenly there is a boom in the city's real estate market, now comes a man claiming this land to be his and sometimes even government agencies claim this to be their land. Does this land really belong to government which never did anything until someone occupied it or an individual who suddenly wakes up to the city's development.
As far as I know, if a property is being used for more than 12 years without anyone questioning it, the user gets the right. How can an individual or government claim the land to be theirs after these many years.
Most of the city's landscape were occupied by someone like this and were sold to other agencies. Since it was registered with a government agency, it gains that legal stature, but how can we expect a coolie, garments worker, painter, or a carpenter living in the slum know these procedures. They simply trust an individual as they are mostly illiterates(maybe the second or third generation is literate) and buy with a signature of vendor and purchaser on bond paper.
How the Slum Come Up
There are some vacant lands in the city which are not in a great shape and no one cares about the neatness of this place. No government authority does any development work in this area or any private owner place a board as private property. Now, a group of villagers or nomads or wanderers come to the city for a living and see the vacant place, construct some hut, and start to live. No one questions them or takes possession of this place for years together. In such a scenario, the occupiers assume this to be a no-man's land and take claim for this property. Some of this group members go in search of jobs in other cities and tend to sell this property to the incoming villagers or laborers.
Are They Legal
A legal expert can give a correct opinion, but from a slum dwellers point of view, he has bought the land from his previous owner for a premium. So, technically he has not occupied someone's land for free. He has been paying the taxes to the government in the form of commercial taxes for every product he buys in the market, so he is a tax paying citizen. He has been living in the same place for 40 to 50 years, i.e., almost 2 generations. It was a no-man's land for 40 to 50 years and suddenly there is a boom in the city's real estate market, now comes a man claiming this land to be his and sometimes even government agencies claim this to be their land. Does this land really belong to government which never did anything until someone occupied it or an individual who suddenly wakes up to the city's development.
As far as I know, if a property is being used for more than 12 years without anyone questioning it, the user gets the right. How can an individual or government claim the land to be theirs after these many years.
Most of the city's landscape were occupied by someone like this and were sold to other agencies. Since it was registered with a government agency, it gains that legal stature, but how can we expect a coolie, garments worker, painter, or a carpenter living in the slum know these procedures. They simply trust an individual as they are mostly illiterates(maybe the second or third generation is literate) and buy with a signature of vendor and purchaser on bond paper.
