The Senate of the Supreme Assembly approved a law aimed at improving the mechanism for preventing violations in the field and efficient use of land plots in Uzbekistan during the meeting held on October 23. The upper house of parliament's press service reported this. The document will be sent to the president for signature.
Senator Shuhrat Chulliev announced the adoption of an important law recognizing the rights to arbitrarily seized land plots and buildings and structures erected on them.
This document recognizes the rights to land plots and objects that have been occupied by the population for many years, but did not have cadastral documents.
— This, of course, will solve a pressing problem that has been troubling our population for a long time. However, this does not mean that it is possible to arbitrarily seize lands in the future and then legalize buildings constructed on them with the intention of legalizing them,— said the senator.
Particularly, administrative and criminal liability measures are being strengthened for violations related to the breach of land law regulations.
Amendments are being made to the Criminal Procedure Code, according to which crimes related to the arbitrary seizure of land plots are included in the jurisdiction of the prosecutor's office. There is already a structure dealing with land issues in the system. Until now, not only the prosecutor's office but also the internal affairs bodies could investigate such crimes.
According to Senator Botir Matmuradov, after being examined by the Internal Affairs Department, in some cases, offenders were held accountable, but issues such as returning unauthorized lands and demolishing buildings on them remained unresolved. Because the Internal Affairs Department was not authorized to file lawsuits without fees on these matters. Moreover, the majority of subjects in such cases are civil servants, hence it was deemed appropriate to include these cases in the prosecutor's office's jurisdiction, he said.
As Shuhrat Chulliev pointed out, previously, state bodies had filed claims to return lands arbitrarily seized by individuals and legal entities, but before the case could be reviewed in court, they managed to illegally build structures on that land and even demanded compensation for demolishing the building.
In accordance with the Regulation on Identifying and Demolishing Illegally Constructed Buildings approved by the Cabinet of Ministers decision from July 5, 2017 (No. 467), a 15-day voluntary demolition deadline is given after identifying an illegal structure.
If voluntary demolition is not carried out, a notice is submitted to the special commission at the khokimiyat within 2 days, and the commission files a lawsuit in court within 3 days. Preparing a civil case for court review requires 10 days, examining and resolving it in court takes 30 days, and for the enforcement order to come into legal force, another 20 days are required.
Given the above, it takes an average of 80 days (2 months 20 days) to deliver a decision on demolishing an illegal building to the Bureau of Compulsory Enforcement.The length of these periods creates conditions for further construction before a court decision is made. Subsequently, even if illegal construction is identified at an initial stage, this will lead to difficulties in eliminating it, according to the explanatory letter.
Now, the Economic and Civil Procedural Codes are being supplemented with norms that allow for the simplified and rapid consideration of cases of returning state lands seized arbitrarily and demolishing buildings on them. To prevent excessive paperwork in courts, a separate list of documents to be attached to the application will be specified in such cases.
Moreover, local executive authorities are to be exempted from state duty when filing lawsuits related to violations of the land law in civil and economic courts.
During the discussion, it was emphasized that the adoption of the Law would increase the effectiveness of combating violations related to land plots, as well as ensure timely recovery of damages caused by crimes.
