Patna: The Patna high court on Monday directed the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts to take expeditious action against alleged encroachment on the “raiyati” lands of Bodh Gaya mutt, a Hindu religious monastery in Gaya district.The court took judicial notice of advocate general (AG) Satyadarshi Sanjay’s statement that delay in disposal of encroachment cases related to Bodh Gaya mutt was hampering the state’s ambitious Bodh Gaya tourist corridor project. It therefore fixed a maximum timeline of six months to complete the overall exercise of removing encroachments from the religious site.A single bench of justice Ajit Kumar passed the order while disposing of a writ petition filed by Suryakant Kumar and 19 other alleged encroachers.The petitioners had approached the high court seeking to restrain the Bodh Gaya circle officer from taking any action under the Bihar Public Land Encroachment Act.Advocate Rajeev Kumar Singh, representing the mutt and its Mahant, a pontiff, submitted that all the petitioners were trespassers on his client’s landed properties and had no valid documents or records to establish their possession of the land.
