Agriculture Current Affairs Part 3
Important Current Affairs and Schemes related to Agriculture in India
Agriculture Current Affairs Part 3
LAND REFORMS
LAND ACQUISITION
- Supreme Court clarified in a case related to Section 24(2) of Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013.
- Section 24(2) of the Act provides for lapse of proceedings i.e. if land is acquired and compensation of the land is not paid within five years, acquisition process would lapse.
Court held that
- land acquisition proceedings will lapse only if there is a failure to take possession and failure to pay compensation.
- Proceedings would not lapse if the government has deposited compensation in the government treasury.
- landowners who refuse to accept compensation cannot press for cancellation of land acquisition.
Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement act, 2013
- It provided for land acquisition as well as rehabilitation and resettlement by replacing Land Acquisition Act, 1894.
- The process for land acquisition involves a Social Impact Assessment survey, preliminary notification stating the intent for acquisition, a declaration of acquisition, and compensation to be given by a certain time.
- Compensation has to be up to 4 times the market value in rural areas and 2 times the market value in urban areas.
- Share in appreciated land value: Where acquired land is sold to a third party for a higher price then, 40 % of the appreciated land value (or profit) will be shared with the original owners.
- Monitoring Committees at the National and State Level to ensure that R&R obligations are met have also been established.
- Caps on Acquisition of Multi-Crop and Agricultural Land: To safeguard food security and to prevent arbitrary acquisition, the act directs States to impose limits on the area under agricultural cultivation that can be acquired.
- Mandatory consent of at least 70 % for acquiring land for public-private partnership (PPP) projects and 80 % for acquiring land for private companies.
• Exemption: The provisions of this act shall not apply to acquisitions under 16 existing legislations including the Special Economic Zones Act, 2005, the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, the Railways Act, 1989, etc.
• Retrospective Operation: To address historical injustice the, it applies retrospectively to cases where no land acquisition award has been made and in cases where the land was acquired five years ago but no compensation has been paid or no possession has taken place
• Return of Unutilized Land: In case land remains unutilized after acquisition, the new Bill empowers states to return the land either to the owner or to the State Land Bank.
• Special Safeguards for Tribal Communities and other disadvantaged groups:
- No land can be acquired in Scheduled Areas without the consent of the Gram Sabhas.
- All rights guaranteed under such legislations as the PESA, 1996 and the Forest Rights Act 2006 are taken care of.
LAND POOLING
- Land Pooling is a land acquisition strategy where ownership rights of privately held land parcels are transferred to an appointed agency, with these land parcels being pooled as a result.
- The agency uses some of the pooled land for infrastructure development and sale, while the rights to new parcels in the pooled land are transferred back to the original landowners in some proportion to their original property.
- Recently, the Central Government notified the Delhi Development Authority’s Policy on Land Polling to enhance economic opportunities and housing development in the city under Master Plan-21.
- It has been done in Gujarat under the mechanism of Town Planning Schemes (TPS) for developing the Dholera Special Investment Region.
- In Andhra Pradesh, land pooling has been done on a large scale for the development of its new capital city of Amaravati.
LAND LEASING
• Land leasing means a contract between the landowner and cultivator, who uses the landowner’s land for agriculture and allied activities for a mutually agreed specified period.
• In India, land leasing was allowed only in some states and there too, the market is poorly developed. It leads to the following issueso Landowners do not lease out land for fear of losing possession and thus keep changing the tenants.
o Tenant farmers cannot avail the benefits of government schemes like credit and insurance.
• To review the existing agricultural tenancy laws of various states, the NITI Aayog had set up an Expert Committee on Land Leasing headed by T Haque.
o It drafted a Model Land Leasing law which seeks to create security among landowners to lease-out agricultural land.
• However, land being a state subject many states are yet to adopt the model law. Also, some central departments had some reservations on it.
• Potential of Land Leasing Framework in India include productive use of land, social security to tenants, improve agricultural efficiency, promote occupational diversification and inclusive development.
Key provisions of the Model Land Leasing Act, 2016
- Legalise land leasing in all areas to ensure complete security of land ownership right for landowners and security of tenure for tenants for the agreed lease period.
- Remove the clause of adverse possession of land in various states’ land laws as it interferes with free functioning of land lease market.
- Automatic resumption of ownership to the landowner, after the agreed lease period without requiring any minimum area of land to be left with the tenant even after termination of tenancy, as laws of some states require.
- Terms of land lease determined mutually by the landowner and the tenant without any fear on the part of the landowner of losing land right or undue expectation on the part of the tenant of acquiring occupancy right.
- Access to institutional support to all tenants including sharecroppers to access insurance bank credit and bank credit against pledging of expected output.
- Promote investment in land improvement by incentivizing tenants and entitling them to get back the unused value of investment at the time of termination of tenancy.
Resolution of Conflicts-
- The cultivator and the owner can settle disputes between them using third party mediation or local governments.
- The State governments would also constitute a special Land Tribunal, which shall be the final authority to adjudicate disputes under the model Act.
DIGITISATION OF LAND RECORDS
- Recently, Ministry of Rural Development informed that about 90 per cent of villages in India have computerized the Records of Right (RoR) and about 53 per cent of survey maps showing boundaries and ownership of land have been digitized.
- Telangana and Maharashtra top the list of states with 99% organization of land records data followed by Andhra Pradesh at 98%.
- Along with some States in the North East, Kerala at 43.24% and Jammu and Kashmir at 9.32% are lagging behind in the organization of land records
- Maharashtra first state to integrate its land records with the web portal of PM Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY)
- PMFBY mandates compulsory verification of land records by ground-level agriculture officers or bank officers.
- With this integration farmers can access their land details online at the enrollment centres and physical verification by these officers will be no longer needed.
- It will ensure better verification and reducing instances of people insuring the same land parcel multiple times, hence solving issue of over insurance. It will also prevent insurance of ineligible people.
Land ownership in India
• Land title is a document that determines the ownership of land or an immovable property. Having a clear land title protects the rights of the title holder against other claims made by anyone else to the property.
• In India, land ownership is determined through various records such as sale deeds that are registered, property tax documents, government survey records, etc.
• However, land titles in India are unclear due to various reasons such as legacy issues of the zamindari system, lack of unified legal framework to implement policies between centre and state (land is a state subject) and poor administration of land records.
• This has led to several legal disputes related to land ownership, and affected the agriculture and real estate sectors and have highlighted the importance of having clear land titles, and a well organized digital land records system.
Government initiatives
• Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP):
- The main aims of DILRMP are to usher in a system of updated land records, automated and automatic mutation, integration between textual and spatial records, interconnectivity between revenue and registration, to replace the present deeds registration.
- The respective States/Uts would undertake the implementation of the programme with the financial and technical aid of the Department of Land Resources, under Ministry of Rural Development.
- The unit of implementation will be the districts where all activities under the programme will converge.
• Some state governments initiative to digitalise land records
- Bhoomi project: It was undertaken and developed by the State Government of Karnataka. It was done so in order to computerize all the records of the land in Karnataka.
- Bhudhaar: This is an initiative of by Andhra Pradesh. Under this each land parcel will be given an 11-digit Bhudhaar number. It will help in easy identification of the details of the land parcel.
- Mahabhulekh: It is initiative of Maharashtra government to issue digitally signed 7/12 and land record.