Kathmandu, June 17 -- As the Balendra Shah-led government decided to take action based on a decades-old report on the encroachment of government and public land, curiosity has grown over how the document was compiled and what it found.

On December 31, 1992, when Girija Prasad Koirala was prime minister, the government formed a high-level commission to investigate and protect government and public land amid rising complaints of encroachment. The initiative was led by then-land reforms minister Jagannath Acharya.

Samar Bahadur Singh, now 63, was a non-gazetted first-class officer at the Ministry of Land Reform at that time. He recalls that complaints had reached the Koirala Cabinet that during the 1986 resurvey, several government and pub...