BAGUIO CITY – The Regional Trial Court (RTC), Branch 60, here ordered the Register of Deeds in this mountain resort city to cease and desist from accepting, registering, or annotating titles issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to several lots which form part of the disputed Forbes Park watershed and forest reservation.

In an order, Judge Edilberto T. Claravall stopped the said office from giving due course to whatever deeds, instruments, or any other documents involving voluntary or involuntary dealings which may have the effect of transferring, conveying, encumbering, ceding, waiving, alienating, or disposing in favor of any individual or entity the parcels of land with the certificates of ancestral land titles as well as its derivative titles.

The titles cover the property where the NCIP issued titles of an area within the watershed that has a total land area of 23 hectares more or less.

The issuance of the 20-day temporary restraining was in response to the complaint filed by the city government of Baguio which alleged the order and the subsequent issuance of the writ of preliminary and permanent injunctions is the quickest remedy at the moment because the Register of Deeds is moving swiftly in having the nine controversial titles registered despite the opposition filed by the local government.

The city argued that the awarding by the NCIP and the corresponding issuance of titles by the Register of Deeds in favor of the heirs of Lauro Carantes appear to be highly irregular in view of the fact the Forbes reservation is an inalienable forest reserve which was withdrawn from sale or settlement by virtue of Proclamation No. 10, issued by Governor-General Leonard Wood in February 1924.