| dc.description.abstract | Statistics of land ownership in Sri
Lanka shows that approximately 82% of land in
the country is under state control while only
17.7% is privately owned, and as a tool of
administration and management of private lands,
Partition Act (Amended) No:17 of 1997) has been
enacted especially for clearing co-ownership
disputes through litigation. Out of longer-term
pending cases in the court, the main cases are
partition cases followed by other land disputes.
This situation urges the requirement of
emphasizing ‘private land administration and
management as they are having “doing business”
potential, due to clear title and less intervention
by public sector decision-makers relative to
public lands. This study aims to examine the
professional involvement of Registered Land
Surveyors (RLS) in partition cases as Court
Commissioners and its relationship with laws
delays in land litigation. Two provinces;
‘Sabaragamuwa’ and ‘Southern’, were selected
purposively for the study, and statistics of RLS
were analyzed. A simple Random sample of RLS s
was drawn from Kegalle District in the
Sabaragamuwa Province. Answers were
obtained for a structured questionnaire. The
study reveals that a large number of private lands
which have development potentials remains
stuck in the adjudication process of partition due
to the lack of Court Commissioners which in turn
leads to prolonged litigations. It was also
revealed that 50% of the RLSs are reluctant to
join this volunteer position due to drawbacks in
the Partition Act. More than 70% of the RLS who
are engaged with partition surveys are over 70
years of age and joining of new RLS with the
courts for the last ten years is below 1 %. It is
anticipated that if the situation continues and if
appropriate remedial measures are not taken by
the authorities and professional institutes,
partition litigations would adversely affect the
private sector land administration and
management. | en_US |
