Siliguri, June 7: The residents of Methibari and Salbari are alarmed at the way the government has re-vested a plot of land on which its legal owner has been running a petrol pump, and given it on a 30-year lease to a third party.

The dispute over the ownership of the two-bigha plot at Salbari, near Sukna, is pending before Calcutta High Court after Dil Prasad Sharma, who runs the Sukna Highway Service petrol pump, filed a petition challenging the order of the district land and land reforms officer, Darjeeling, granting lease to one D.P. Ghosh of Bijanbari.

?Despite Sharma being in possession of the land with proper documents issued by competent authorities, how can the government lease out the land to a third person?? asked R.S. Limboo, president of the Joint Action Committee (land matters) of the Methibari and Salbari area.

Addressing a news conference today, the members of the JAC feared their land documents, too, could be declared invalid or non-operative in the future, despite possessing sale and purchase deeds, mutation certificates and land-tax receipts.

Over 1,000 families reside in Methibari-Salbari and surrounding areas of Champasari and Khaprail, all within a 7-km radius of Siliguri. Sharma accused a one-time business associate of his of hatching a plot to snatch his land. ?D.P. Ghosh is fronting for Pawan Kumar Agarwal, who is also from Bijanbari, and with whom I had bought the two-bigha plot from Dharmabala Devi on November 15, 1999,? said Sharma.

Subsequently, on July 25, 2000, Sharma said he bought Agarwal?s share in the land and got it duly mutated, besides paying the tax. ?However, on the bidding of Agarwal, the land department authorities granted the land to Ghosh on a 30-year lease on April 19, 2004, on the basis of their false claim that the land had not been vested previously,? alleged Sharma.

Agarwal refused to comment saying the matter was sub judice.