TUR vows to fight land grabbing

Noted land right activist Ramesh Sharma during the TUR meeting on Monday. Pix by WT Lytan
Noted land right activist Ramesh Sharma during the TUR meeting on Monday. Pix by WT Lytan

SHILLONG, APR 21: Thma u rangli juki (TUR) leader Angela Rngad said the organization fight against land grabbing and setting up of the new Shillong township will continue even as land right activist Ramesh Sharma said people are losing lands to industralisation, mining, urbanization and land grabbing.

Addressing a meeting on ‘urban development, townships and displacement’ organized by TUR on Monday Rngad asserted, “We will not accept any model of development which is based on land grabbing.”

Rngad instead suggested to the government to focus on developing the  districts, towns, blocks to prevent rural migration to urban cities instead of creating a new Shillong township by taking away peoples’ land.

Noted land rights activist Ramesh Sharma of the Ekta Parishad underscored the need to pressurize the government to come up with new Urban Land Ceiling Act (ULCA).  He said, “We need to collectively raise our voices on the need to have a new Urban Land Ceiling Act (ULCA) in place.”

Sharma sounded a warning when he said there has been a massive change in the peripheries of big and small cities after repealing of the ULCA in 1988. He was of the opinion that the repercussion of repealing the act has had a negative impact on the land issue.

The act was passed in 1978 but never implemented properly.

Sharma said,  “We are losing our lands not to natural calamities but because of different forces like industrialization, mining, urbanization, land grabbing and other phenomena.”

Sharma informed that according to the Centre for Science and Environment (2010), about 1.7 million acres of land have been acquired exclusively for infrastructural, mining and industrial operations during the period 1980 – 2010.

The per capita availability of land has declined from 0.89 hectares in 1951 to 0.37 hectares in 1991 and projected to slide down to 0.20 hectares in 2035, Sharma said adding this is not due to population pressure which is a big myth as propagated by demographic experts in the country.

Sharma also castigated the government as according to him the country does not have a statistic on the landless or homeless as land are mostly acquired for the purpose of setting up big projects but not an inch is given to the poor which is very much contradictory to the existing land ceiling act.

Sharma thundered that the land ceiling act is not a law but a flaw as it has completely failed. – By Our Reporter

 

 

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