The Trinamul Congress on Thursday expelled Gautam Goswami, the vice-president of the party’s Dabgram-Fulbari organisational block, for his alleged involvement in land grabbing.

Goswami, who was arrested last week on charges of land grabbing, is in police custody now. He, along with Debasish Pramanik, former president of the TMC’s same organisational block, and some others were allegedly involved in illegally grabbing government and private land near Siliguri.

“We expelled Gautam Goswami from the party today according to the instructions of the state leadership. The administration and police are probing the case and checking out land documents of resorts and other private properties which have come up in different areas of Jalpaiguri district,” said Mahua Gope, the Jalpaiguri district TMC president.

Sources in the administration said they had initiated the process to check out whether tourist accommodations like resorts and hotels, eateries, shops and other private properties had come up on encroached land in the Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri district.

Teams comprising officials of the district land and land reforms department and other departments are visiting several places in Malbazar, Kranti, Rajganj, Mainaguri and Dhupguri blocks to find out if such properties have valid documents.

Gope, who is also a member of the Jalpaiguri zilla parishad, said most of those resorts didn’t get their plans approved by the zilla parishad.

“Resorts have mushroomed in the Dooars. We want a complete probe and all those involved in the illegal practice of encroaching on government land should face legal consequences,” she added.

At an administrative meeting last month, chief minister Mamata Banerjee expressed anguish over the activities of land mafias across the state. She pointed out the highhandedness of land sharks at Dabgram-Fulbari near here.

Following the chief minister’s instruction, the authorities swung into action and launched a crackdown on unauthorised constructions. The police arrested Pramanik, some of his associates and Goswami.

In Dhupguri, the land and land reforms department conducted a survey on Thursday to clear encroachments along the state PWD road. “There are reports that some shopowners have encroached on the PWD’s land on either side of the road. We are identifying the encroachers and they will be evicted soon,” said an official.

The Malbazar municipality launched a drive to clear encroachments. Three abandoned shops were removed from near a cinema hall.

“We have cleared three illegal and abandoned shops. Other shop owners have been asked to remove the encroachments or else, we will clear those,” Swapan Saha, the civic chairman, said.

A similar drive was carried out by the Balurghat municipality. In the presence of Ashok Mitra, the civic chairman, and Santinath Panja, the inspector-in-charge, encroachments were cleared from the pavements.

“We had provided time to the traders and today, we launched the drive. Some illegal constructions were cleared and the drive will continue,” said Mitra.

Additional reporting by Kousik Sen in Raiganj