COURT STOPS STATE FROM TRANSACTING LAND DEALINGS.

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Ardhi House in Nairobi.

BY NT CORRESPONDENT.

The state has been barred from collecting and receiving funds from the defunct office of the Commissioner of Lands.

The court also restrained the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning through lawyer Solomon Mbuthia from using a lease document that has not been prepared and executed by the National Land Commission.

Justice John Mativo further stopped the ministry from utilizing the fund in the said account without express written permission and consent of the National Lands Commission.

The temporary orders were given following a suit by a commissioner in the NLC Ulkadir Khalif through lawyer Charles Kanjama who claimed that the Ministry was producing illegal titles which was in violation of a court order issued by the high court and Supreme Court last year.

According to Khalif, it has been five years since the transitional section of the sixth schedule of the constitution was fulfilled by the establishment of the National Lands Commission and as such no public land administration and management of functions should be undertaken by the Land’s ministry.

He says the Supreme Court had also pronounced itself in the specific and interrelated mandates of the NLC and the Supreme Court opinion was to ensure the function of management and administration of public land was vested exclusively in the NLC while that of registration of title of land was vested in the ministry subject to approval by NLC.

According to the commissioner, the Land’s ministry has constitutionally undermined the role of the NLC and as such occasioned a backlog of 7000 leases pending registration.

“Since December 2016 all land dealings in leaseholds, including granting of new leases, renewal of leases, extension of leases, change of user and subdivision have stalled thus occasioning a major crisis in public land management and thus occasioning the urgent need for immediate relief,” he said in court documents.

The commissioner accuses the Land’s ministry of continuing to operate the account of the defunct commissioner of Lands and financially benefit from the funds in spite the said office being abolished by the coming into being of the NLC in February 2013.

He further accuses Public Service Commission of recreating a Department in the Ministry of Lands with similar functions as those of NLC which is a violation of the constitution

Justice Mativo directed the matter will be heard on November 29, 2017.

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