Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 25 (IANS) Indian armed forces officers’ pastime of playing golf on prime defence land has drawn sharp criticism from government auditors, who have called it illegal exploitation of government property.

They have also asked the government to take a serious view of commercial use of the defence land by floating golf clubs and collecting membership subscriptions from serving officers, civilians and even foreign nationals, but not remitting the revenue in government coffers.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, tabled in parliament Friday, noted that the army operated 97 such golf course across the country, of which 79 clubs have occupied 8,076.94 acres of top class defence land meant strictly for military purposes.

In the case of other 18 golf courses, there is no data available on the details of the land they are occupying.

“Scales of accommodation for defence services do not include golf as an authorised activity. Hence golf grounds and attendant activities cannot be considered as military activities and A-1 (top classification) land cannot be used for golf courses,” the 58-page performance audit of defence estates management said.

Noting that the golf courses were operated by Army Zone Golf, a private body, of which not only service personnel, but retired defence personnel, civilians and foreign nationals as well were members, the report said the membership fee and annual subscriptions collected by them were revenues earned without paying any lease rent and allied charges for use of government land.

“Revenue (so) generated was not credited to government account and was presumably credited to regimental fund,” it said.

Despite such anomalies on the status of golf courses, the CAG said, the defence ministry had never framed rules governing such facilities or on the revenues generated out of them.

“The status of such (golf) courses spread over huge areas of prime defence land continues to be unclear in the absence of any approved policy or set of rules. This has allowed the authorities to exploit these golf courses not only for sports and recreational purposes by the defence personnel, but also to earn large amounts of revenue by allowing persons other than service personnel to use these facilities,” it said.

In defence of these golf courses, the army had argued before the CAG that these were environment parks that were also used as training areas for troops.

“Defence estates organisation pointed out that… as per the Cantonment Land Administration Rules of 1937 and Scales of Accommodation of 1983 (now 2009), golf courses were not permitted on A-1 defence land as the activity required huge chunks of land affecting the Key Location Plan (military deployment plans) of stations and also in non-availability of land when the units, as per Key Location Plan come up,” it added.

Defence Ministry is among the largest land holders in the country with 17.31 lakh acres in its possession, of which 2 lakh acres are with 62 cantonments and the rest 15.3 lakh acres with military stations, air force stations, naval bases, and other defence organisations. Army occupies 80 percent of the entire land holding of the defence ministry.

The auditors noticed that between 1997 and 2009, encroachment on defence land had more than doubled. In 1997, 6,903 acres of defence land were encroached upon and in 2009, the squatters had spread to a total of 14,539.38 acres.

Yet, no concrete action was taken by the ministry to prevent such squatting and no monitoring mechanism was put in place.