Chandigarh: The Punjab government’s most ambitious land acquisition exercise ever seems to have hit a roadblock even before being officially announced.
The state’s housing department intends to acquire a whopping 24,311 acres of land in southern Ludhiana for the development of urban estates. This is the highest-ever chunk of land planned to be acquired in a single region in Punjab. The acquisition will take place across multiple zones and the move was cleared during a meeting of various department heads chaired by the chief secretary last month.
The land slated for acquisition accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total area of Ludhiana district.
Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority (GLADA), the government body under the housing department was given the go ahead to start gathering land for the proposed urban estate projects.
Addressing a press conference Tuesday, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal declared that his party will not allow a single inch of this land to be acquired even if it means mounting an agitation.
He said the move was planned in a manner to facilitate large scale corruption by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders from Delhi led by party chief Arvind Kejriwal.
He added that he had visited Isapur, one of the villages in Ludhiana where land was to be taken by the government. “The land owners told us that the cost of land there was almost Rs 5 crore an acre and there was no way the government could match this amount while acquiring the land,” he said.
Badal added that the large difference in the market value of the land and the compensation that would likely be offered by the government created fertile ground for rampant corruption. “Landowners not wanting to be a part of the acquisition process will pay huge bribes for their land to be taken out of it. It’s already happening. Soon all registries of land would be halted in the area. Landowners are being forced to prepare backdated documents to prove to the government that they had buildings or sheds or residential houses on their lands to take them out of the scheme,” said Badal.
He added that he was receiving similar complaints from other areas in Ludhiana and will be visiting these villages in the coming days.
Badal said that even as the acquisition process had been set into motion, Kejriwal had appointed his former cabinet colleagues, Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain, to oversee various projects in Punjab.
“Apart from these two, persons loyal to AAP’s Delhi leadership have been put in key positions in RERA (Real estate regulatory authority), the Punjab Large Industrial Board and the Punjab Pollution Control Board. Which means that anyone who objects to the acquisition process will find no relief from these bodies,” said Badal.
Leaders of Bhartiya Kisan Union Dakaunda have already announced that they would be protesting against the acquisition of land in Ludhiana.
Few details about Punjab’s largest land acquisition have been made public. When contacted, Punjab’s Principal Secretary, Housing, Vikas Garg, was tight-lipped about the project.
“We’re still working on the project. It is too early to say anything. Moreover, it would not be appropriate to share details of the exercise,” he said.
Sources in the government, however, added that the land will be acquired not in the traditional method of acquisition, which included farmers parting with their land compulsorily, but through “land pooling” which is a voluntary exercise.
“Acquisition of such a large amount of land is not practical as the process of acquisition is full of social, cultural and legal hurdles. However, land pooling is the way forward in this case,” said an officer involved in the process but who wished to not be named.
The land pooling scheme notified by the government in 2013 offered to make land owners stakeholders in urban development. The scheme entailed the land owner being given cash compensation along with a part of the developed land in the form of plots. Landowners could also opt to go in for “letters of intent” from the government which they could further sell.
Former state government officer K.B.S. Sidhu, who served in the housing department for several years wrote about the project in his recent blog.
He pointed out that direct acquisition could mean a staggering compensation bill for the government. “The basic per-acre cost is unlikely to be less than ₹50 lakh, amounting to a total outlay of at least ₹12,000 crore—the Punjab Government appears to be banking on a land-pooling model as a strategic alternative to conventional acquisition,” he wrote.
“The land-pooling approach sidesteps this challenge by offering landowners Letters of Intent in lieu of immediate cash compensation, promising them developed residential plots or commercial sites within the reconstituted layout,” he wrote.
Sidhu said the land pooling method achieved a dual objective of reducing the immediate funding pressure on GLADA, while giving landowners a lucrative and tradeable stake in the future urban form.
He hailed the government’s move, calling it the state’s “bold initiative”.
“The Punjab Government’s decision to acquire 24,311 acres of land in and around Ludhiana in one consolidated exercise through the GLADA marks one of the most ambitious urban planning initiatives in recent memory,” he wrote, adding that few state governments had attempted such large scale land acquisition in a “single stroke”.
Sidhu however, cautioned that the “sheer magnitude” of the Ludhiana proposal demanded “cautious realism”.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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