Srinagar, Nov 3 (IANS) The People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) on Tuesday said that the new land laws were brought by the Centre to ‘hoodwink the people in Jammu and Kashmir’.
While rejecting the new land laws, PAGD said these were an attempt to distort facts and mislead people. In a statement issued by the media office of the PAGD, the alliance said that the land laws that existed in the erstwhile J&K state were most progressive, pro people and pro former in the entire Indian Subcontinent.
The statement added, “The real object of repealing the basic land laws and invoking massive amendments to the other laws is to push in and implement the agenda of effecting a demographic change and disempowering the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
“Jammu and Kashmir was first in the country to implement the concept of ‘land to tiller’ by enacting Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, 1952 followed by Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976 restricting the land holding to twelve and half acres and ending the exploitative practice of ‘absentee landlordism’ and, whosoever calls it archaic would be guilty of ignorance of the history of Jammu and Kashmir.
“It is because of the timely land reforms that no starvation deaths occur in Jammu and Kashmir, no farmers suicides have been ever reported from Jammu and Kashmir and everyone in Jammu and Kashmir has available three fundamental necessities — food, clothing and shelter, the position that is now sought to be reversed by making massive assault on the land law regime,” the statement said.
The statement asked as to how can Alienation of Land Act be termed as archaic when it prohibited transfer of land to a non state subject, thus protecting the interests of the Permanent Residents of Jammu and Kashmir and at the same time made a provision for transfer of land by mortgage to organisations like Industrial Development Bank of India, Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India to keep pace with industrial development.
“The repeal of the Act now allows the land to be transferred to the non state subjects, denying the residents of Jammu and Kashmir of their most precious rights. The claimed protection of rights in agricultural land, it is stated, is mere eyewash as the amendment introduced in the Land Revenue Act provides for permission to sell the agricultural land almost at mere asking without difficulty.
“The abolition of Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, 1952 and amendments in Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976 is against farmers and removes the ceiling on acquisition. The changes in the Development Act and creation of “security zones” to avoid adherence to the rules and regulations as regards construction activities in such zones and exclusion of oversight by expert bodies, environmental activists and civil society groups is bound to put at peril the ecosystem in fragile environmental areas like Gulmarg, Pahalgam and Sonamarg already under pressure beyond their carrying capacity,” the statement said.
The statement added that the laws now introduced through amendments are not only against people of Jammu and Kashmir but undemocratic, unconstitutional and backward looking with only aim to disempower people and change the demography.
Pertinently, the J&K government spokesperson Rohit Kansal said on Monday that the government has repealed 11 land laws that existed in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir “replacing the old, regressive, intrinsically contradictory and outdated laws with a set of modern, progressive and people friendly provisions”.
–IANS
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