Guthi Corp in mess, its lands in grips of tenants

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, January 9

The Guthi Corporation (GC), culturally most valuable institution administering the religious shrines, world heritage sites and cultural activities, is quite unknown to the land belonging to it. Majority of its land is in grips of tenants across the country.

Among the 10 world heritage sites in the country, eight are cultural sites. They include Pashupatinath Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Bhaktapur Durbar Square, Hanumandhoka Durbar Square, Changu Narayan Temple, Bouddhanath Stupa and Syambunath Stupa, which are operated under the trust.

According to the GC central office, there is no specific data on land related to it although the trust was recognised through the Guthi Corporation Act 1964 despite its operation since ancient period of Nepal. There are about 2,100 state trusts (Guthis) in 68 districts among 75 districts across the nation. 

“There is no specific data and records of Guthi land yet,” said Saroj Thapalia, deputy administrator at the GC. “We have recorded about 1.4 million ropanies of land in total throughout the nation,” he told this daily. “We are still collecting the status of its land,” he added.

Deepak Bahadur Pandey, deputy administrator at the GC, said that the land belonging to the trusts was widely misused. “Majority of land has been personalised and misused, which is against the spirit of the trust,” he said.

The law of the country allowed people to transfer the Guthi land to its tenants, said legal officer Hem Raj Subedi. “The GC Act 1976 provisioned to transfer the trust land to the ownership of the tenants. It became worse when the GC Act 1984 widely permitted to do so,” he said.

There are four kinds of Guthi land, which totals to 561,991 ropanies in hills and 66,330 bighas land in Tarai as per the available present data in 68 districts of the country. Of them, Guthi owns only 243,608 ropanies in hills and 2,196 bighas of land in Tarai, according to the GC.

Remaining amount of the area has been transferred to the tenants, Thapalia said. “However, we are ignorant of the fact that how much land Guthi owned in the past,” he said.

Subedi said that the process of transfer was restricted by the Apex Court in 2008, terming it as ‘virus’ against Guthi. “Since then, the misuse has been checked,” he said. “The GC was defamed because of the land transfer, which should not have been dealt by the trust itself,” he added. “The responsibility should have been given to the Land Revenue Office.”