Advocates yesterday called on authorities to reverse a land expropriation decision in Hsinchu County saying that it is based on a wrongful subdivision that encroached on private property.
Located in Jhubei City (竹北) near the Fongshan River (鳳山溪), buildings owned by Tseng Li-chen (曾莉蓁) have been facing demolition since the Jhubei Land Office allegedly wrongfully subdivided the land in 2012.
The northern part of the Tseng family land was expropriated by the Water Resources Agency (WRA) in 1986 for hydraulic development, with the construction of a levee, nearby roads and drainage facilities completed in 2000.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
In 2003, Tseng’s family put up buildings on what they say remained their property, which is defined by a trench along a levee in the north and a riprap in the south.
However, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) in 2010 approved revocation of the land expropriation for unclear reasons, while the office in 2012 conducted the allegedly wrongful land subdivision.
The subdivision moved the edge of Tseng’s property south by about 5m on its updated land registry map, National Cheng Kung University geomatics professor Chiu Chung-ming (邱仲銘) said.
The subdivision was incorrect, as the boundaries it delineated do not align with those that had been established over the past decades, which can be traced as far back as the Japanese colonial era, he said.
The incorrect survey placed part of Tseng’s property into the area to be expropriated, Chiu said, adding that the land in this erroneously defined area was acquired by the WRA’s Second River Management Branch and sold to a third party after the planned project was scrapped.
Chiu also suspected that the wrongful subdivision was planned, not a mistake, as the farmland readjustment zone south of the riprap was not affected by the subdivision accordingly.
It has also led to several incidents, he said.
A landowner was accused of “grabbing” the land around the riprap and asked to pay five years’ rent to the county government, he said.
Similarly, Tseng was accused by her neighbors of “unlawfully occupying” their land and asked to buy it or demolish her buildings.
A court ruling in 2018 said her property “unlawfully occupies” the land defined by what Chiu said are incorrectly delineated boundaries, demanding that she return “illegal gains” of NT$6,618.
Government Watch Alliance organizer Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said the Land Administration Department provided documents about the land expropriation in 1986, which showed that the trench constructed by the agency matched the boundary defined in the original land registry maps.
That means there is no land in the area for the MOI to conduct so-called “expropriation revocation,” she said.
The department said land expropriation was conducted according to Article 50 of the Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例) and further handling must be applied for by people who need or use the land.
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