Tikapur Multiple Campus Land Encroachment Halts Academic Expansion
Nearly 300 bighas of land owned by Tikapur Multiple Campus in Kailali, Sudurpaschim Province, has been encroached on, bringing the campus’s academic expansion and master plan to a halt.
The campus, which operates as a constituent campus of Far Western University, said that practical studies, research, and infrastructure expansion related to agricultural science have been affected because it has been unable to use land for which it holds its own land ownership certificate.
According to Campus Chief Dhabindra Rawal, the campus had 80 bighas of land when it was established in 2058 BS. Later, in 2062 BS, the Tikapur Development Committee transferred an additional 300 bighas of land in the name of the campus.
Rawal said the campus has legal records and land ownership certificates for 380 bighas of land.
The campus administration said encroachment began in 2063 BS, less than a year after the land was received. The campus side has accused interest groups’ pressure and political parties’ strategy to protect vote banks of allowing the encroachment to grow, despite efforts from the beginning to stop illegal occupation.
“Structures were rapidly built on the campus land with political backing and the support of power. Now, without the campus’s consent, even schools, health posts, roads, and electricity poles have reached there through government investment,” Rawal said.
The campus is currently running bachelor’s-level BSc Agriculture and master’s-level MSc Agriculture classes in agricultural science.
Although practical education such as agriculture requires a large area of land for farming and research, the campus said it has not been able to use the land it owns on paper in practice.
“We have sufficient land on paper, but in practice, it has become difficult to conduct practical classes for students,” Rawal said.
He said the lack of usable land has also prevented the campus from adding new technical programs and moving ahead with infrastructure construction.
In Tikapur Municipality-1 alone, 5,100 families have filled out forms claiming to be landless. Ward Chair Mohan BK said most of them are living in the encroached area of the campus.
According to him, the problem is complex because the settlement is a mix of freed Kamaiya families, flood victims, and unmanaged settlers.
Some former employees of the then Tikapur Village Development Committee are also said to have occupied land under the pretext that they did not receive service benefits.
According to the campus administration, many of the people living there are not actual landless people. Locals say some have houses and land elsewhere but have built houses on the campus land, while others who own property in other local levels of Kailali are also trying to receive benefits as landless people here.
Ward Chair BK said the work of distinguishing actual and fake landless people has not been completed because land reform commissions formed to resolve the landless problem have repeatedly been dissolved due to political instability.
According to him, the new government will now have to settle the issue.
After a long period of uncertainty, Tikapur Municipality has moved some processes forward. The municipality has already collected data on nearly 10,000 landless and unmanaged settlers within the municipality.
According to Information Officer Deviprasad Acharya, details are now being made public at the ward level, and claims and objections are being invited.
He said this process will identify the actual landless people, after which the management work will move ahead.
The municipality has also started a campaign to remove structures built by encroaching on public land in the market area.
However, a concrete decision is still pending regarding the 300 bighas of land belonging to Tikapur Multiple Campus.
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