KapilDave
: Gandhinagar, Sun Apr 22 2012, 03:03 hrs
The state government is likely to
announce a new gauchar (pastoral) land policy to comply with the last
year’s Supreme Court order asking state governments to not sell
government-owned pastoral land for industrial or commercial use.
A policy draft prepared by the
state’s revenue department says the government will not give any
pastoral land for industrial or commercial purposes and will also
ensure these are not encroached against the interests of the local
community.
C L Meena, principal secretary
(revenue), told The Indian Express, “We have finalised the draft
for the new gauchar policy and sent it to the finance department for
their final views. We expect to get it cleared soon.”
“Under
the new policy, we will not give gauchar land for industrial or
commercial purposes. If a gauchar land is in middle of an urban area,
the government will denotify and sell the land and develop pastures
at an alternate site. In some cases, the government has given land
for some public purposes, for instance, schools, which require
adjoining gauchar land. In such cases, we will sell the land to them
and use the money in developing new pastoral land,” Meena added.
Asked about the money realised by
the state government by selling gauchar land to industries, Meena
said, “We have started handing over 30% of such amount to village
panchayats for the development of alternate gauchar land. Around Rs
23 crore have already been disbursed to villages.”
The SC order had said that
“pastoral land and other community resources belonging to a village
shall not be given for industrial or commercial use and should
strictly be used for communities”.
The apex court had directed all
the state governments to formulate schemes for eviction of
illegal/unauthorised occupants of land meant for the Gram Sabhas and
Gram Panchayats.
In the last three years, the state
government has sold or given away a total of 1.16 lakh square metres
of gauchar land in five districts for other uses. Around 424 villages
in the state have no pastoral land left.
The state should have 39.56 lakh
hectares of grazing land, as per a revenue department notification
issued in December 1988, which mandated 16 hectares (40 acres) of
pastoral land for 100 animals in normal areas and 8 hectares (20
acres) for the same in forest areas.
As against this, the state only
has an estimated 8.5 lakh hectares, a data that has hardly changed
since the state’s formation in 1960.
Encroachment over pastoral land in
state is becoming a big problem. According to the government’s own
data as on September 2010, there were 50,771 encroachments in around
16,000 villages, of which 36,960 encroachments had existed for over
five years.
A state government notification
passed in 1999 had promised to compensate villagers whose pasture
land was taken away. As per the notification, government was to
charge 30% more from the party which was sold the pasture land and
give it to the gram panchayat to buy alternate pasture land or
develop one. The scheme, however, has not been fully implemented as
yet.
© 2012 The Indian Express
Limited. All rights reserved
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