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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Poll-wary Left gives land right to squatters

Poll-wary Left gives land right to squatters

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published Published on Jun 28, 2010   modified Modified on Jun 28, 2010

The Left Front government today tried to woo back poor voters by enacting a law that confers land rights on impoverished families who have forcibly occupied plots and built homes there.

Two lakh families, categorised in the bill as agricultural labourers, fishermen and artisans and described as “very poor’’, will benefit from the law. The settlement rights will be given only up to five-and-a-half cottahs and only if the squatters have built their homes there by the cut-off date of December 31, 2009.

“Our government has always been concerned about the poor. This amendment is for them,” land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah said after introducing the homestead land amendment bill in the Assembly. “If we don’t stand up for them, the zamindars and jotedars will oust them with money power.”

The move comes a day after chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told a CPM state committee meeting that a “distance” had grown between the party and the poor, and that corrective measures were needed to re-establish relations.

Bengal’s poor have largely voted for the Left Front since its tenure in power began in 1977, but appear to be abandoning the ruling alliance in droves since the 2008 panchayat polls.

Soon after Mollah tabled the bill, Trinamul Congress and Congress members walked out claiming a “lame duck government” lacked the moral right to bring in such a law. Later, lawmakers from both Opposition parties met governor M.K. Narayanan and requested him to withhold his assent to the new legislation.

Leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee told reporters: “Having lost one election after another, this CPM government is now shedding crocodile tears for the poor. This government has lost the mandate to rule, so it doesn’t have the moral right to table this legislation.’’

Mollah countered: “I have this to say (to the Opposition), ‘Come to power next year and reverse today’s amendment act that talks about the interests of the poor’.”

The ownership rights will shield the squatter families, most of whom have been residing on the occupied plots for generations, from being evicted by, say, promoters. Since all such forcibly grabbed land in the state is private land, the state government will first acquire the plots and then transfer them.

The original homestead land bill dates back to Congress chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s rule, when June 1975 was set as the cut-off month for giving settlement rights to squatters.

Another amendment bill was passed today seeking to regularise illegal conversion or alteration of a plot’s area or character by below-poverty-line owners in both rural and urban areas, provided they have lived on the plot for at least 20 years. The upper limit is five cottahs in rural areas and two cottahs in urban areas.


The Telegraph, 29 June, 2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100629/jsp/nation/story_12621248.jsp


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