Land return, eye on polls - Mamata to give back 10000 acres

PRANESH SARKAR

Calcutta, May 22: The Mamata Banerjee government has decided to return nearly 10,000 acres from its land bank to 30,000-odd original owners by the end of the year with an eye on electoral gains, officials said. No one in the government would go on record but The Telegraph has seen a land and land reforms department order, sent to the departments holding the plots and the district authorities, to start the land-return process at the earliest. The decision comes at a time land unavailability is being cited as a key factor constraining industrial growth in Bengal, and Mamata's promise to return the Singur land is tied up in a legal tangle. Officials said most of the plots to be returned, many of them between 10 and 50 acres, would be prime land for small and medium-scale industries and were located in Haldia, Kalyani, and parts of North and South 24-Parganas and Howrah. The order says the state will pay a yearly rent on these plots, acquired mostly during the 1970s through the 1990s, at a compound rate of 6 per cent of their price. "This will require Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 4,000 crore — not a small amount for a cash-strapped state. It's clear the ruling party wants to send out a message to rural voters," a senior government official said. The July rural polls in Bengal may be followed by elections to 13 civic bodies in November before the Lok Sabha polls become due next summer. The order doesn't mention how much land is to be returned from the state's 3 lakh-acre land bank but government sources put it at 10,000 acres. One official suggested an alternative reason for the government decision, which sources said was taken at a meeting in February. "Although these plots have been in the government's possession for decades, the acquisition process was not completed as no compensation was paid. An estimated Rs 15,000 crore needs to be spent to complete the acquisition but the government doesn't have the money," the official said. He said the plots were acquired under the West Bengal Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Act of 1948, which was repealed in 1997 following a prod from the Centre as it ran counter to the central Land Acquisition Act of 1894. "The 1948 act empowered the state to calculate and declare the compensation years after taking over a plot, without the need to entertain objections and claims from the land-losers," the official said. He said this act was used to acquire prime land needed urgently for development while other plots were acquired under the 1894 law. Yet, some 10,000 acres lie unused. When the 1948 act was repealed in 1997, the then Left Front government acknowledged that acquisition of 15,000 acres involving 5,000 cases was still incomplete in the absence of compensation payment. The Left government brought in a law to prevent the acquisitions lapsing but the high court struck it down in 2010. The Trinamul government enacted a fresh law to keep the acquisitions alive till March 2015. "It's true that money is a problem but since most of these plots are prime land, the government could have tried to retain them at least till 2015 had it been keen on using them for industry," an official said. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130523/jsp/frontpage/story_16928925.jsp