Change in land assignment rules stirs up a hornet’s nest

Girish Menon, Thiruvananthapuram
The Hindu, August 4, 2015
The State government notification amending the Kerala Land Assignment rules to regularise occupation of government leased land in hilly tracts of the State, including those that were encroached on prior to June 1 2005, has stirred a hornet’s nest.
While Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Revenue Minister Adoor Prakash justified the amendment by asserting that it would benefit the common man and cultivators in the hill tracts, environmentalists feared that it would end up in benefitting big land sharks.
The notification, published in the Kerala Gazette on Monday, seeks to introduce a new rule (Rule 7 B) to the Kerala Land Assignment Rules, 1964, related to assignment of land in hilly tracts. It seeks to assign land to any person who occupies government land under lease in hilly tracts, (including expired lease) or by way of encroachments no considered objectionable if such occupation completes 10 years as on June 1, 2015. The total land such a person will be able to hold will be four acres as per sub rule (1) of Rule 5 or if the annual family income from sources other than the government land held by him is below Rs.3 lakh.
The official explanation for this amendment is that the government had received numerous applications for assignment of lands in hilly tracts from people who have developed and cultivated them, besides living there.
The operative part of the notification is that it would regularise all encroachment prior to June 1, 2005. Idukki will be the major beneficiary of the new amendment, according to Revenue Department sources.
Mr. Prakash said that the new rule would be helpful for the ordinary citizen and the government would take the appropriate steps to ensure that this provision was not misused by land sharks. The Chief Minister said that the decision was not taken overnight and was only a continuation of the UDF policy. However, opposition came from within the Congress party.
Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president V.M. Sudheeran sought an explanation from Mr. Prakash, while another Congress MLA T.N. Prathapan in way highlighted Mr. Sudheeran’s concern by expressing apprehensions about the negative impact of the new rule.
Apart from the concerns about land sharks cornering large chunk of land in the name of regularising encroachment, officials were doubtful whether the new rule could be implemented in Idukki, which accounts for a major portion of land earmarked for title-deed assignment.
This is because the contentious new rule relates to assignment of registry under the Land Assignment Rules. But there are several tracts of land which are earmarked for distributing title-deeds under the Kerala Land Assignment (Regularisation of Occupation of Forest Lands prior to 1-1-1977) Special Rules 1993. There is also another contention that the new rule will help the State to over come hurdles imposed by the classification of land as Ecologically Sensitive Areas under the Kasturirangan report, sources said.