Content Page Nos

Recommendations

1. 
   Ceiling limits must be re-fixed and implemented with retrospective effect. The new limit should be 5-10 acres in the case of irrigated land and 10-15 acres for non-irrigated land, to be decided by the concerned state governments. ¹⁰
   
2. 
   Absentee landlords or non-resident landowners should have lower level of ceiling.
   
3. 
   Introduction of Card Indexing System for preventing fictitious transfers in benami names. This card should be related to allottee's Voted I/D Card or PAN.
   
4. 
   Discontinue exemptions granted to religious, educational, charitable and industrial organizations under ceiling laws of various states. Each entity should have the same ceiling as a family, even though state may exempt any particular category on valid grounds.
   
5. 
   Mutts, religious establishments including temples, Church, etc which have been existing since 1950 would be allowed one unit of 15 acres. A temple having numerous deities will also have only one ceiling as one religious entity. A temple will be considered as a single unit and if there was a cluster of temples with the same campus they would also come under the same unit.
   
6. 
   For Research Organisations, Agricultural Universities/Colleges and similar types of institutions including proposed industrial and commercial units, in the future the government would have the power to allow more than one unit of ceiling to fulfill strictly the objectives for which these institutions/ organisations would be set up. It has to be done on a customized case-to-case basis. The organisation/entity will enter into an actionable agreement with the government that in case, they fail to fulfill the utilization of land as agreed upon such lands will be resumed by the government.
   
7. 
   The general exemption that has been given for plantation, orchard, mango/litchi groves, fisheries and other special categories of land use should be done away with.
   
8. 
   Set up Land Tribunals or Fast Track Courts under Article 323-B of the Constitution for expeditious disposal of appeal cases.
   
9. 
   Impose criminal sanction on the failure to furnish declaration of ceiling surplus land by land holders.
   
10. 
    Specifically in the case of Land Ceilings where the cases have been decided basing on fraud and misrepresentation of facts, which are at Primary Tribunal stage. In cases where the Courts have already passed orders in Appeal or Revision, action may be taken to file Review Petition.
    
11. 
    Penal provision for non-submission of returns for ceiling surplus holdings should be strict and rigorous. A penal clause inserted within existing ceiling laws should make officers accountable and responsible for intentional lapses.
    
12. 
    The Divisional officers cum Tribunal Officers should dispose off the cases within the stipulated period. As and when the cases are disposed by the superior courts, the tribunal officer should take immediate action to ensure surrender of excess land by the declarants.
    
13. 
    The District Magistrate or Deputy Commissioner should be empowered to speed up allotment of surplus land. Civil Court jurisdiction must be barred in respect of agricultural land. Any decree or order passed by any court should be treated as null.
    
14. 
    No decree or order to evict an allottee to be executed unless it is approved by the Board of Revenue or by the High Court.
    
15. 
    The Benami Transactions (Prohibition of the Right to Recover Property Act) of 1989 should be amended so that evasion of ceiling laws through fraudulent land transactions can be monitored.
    
16. 
    Cases of illegal or improper allotments of ceiling surplus land to be investigated and allotments to be cancelled. All transactions after commencement of Ceiling Law to be declared null and void.
    
17. 
    Identify cases of non-physical possession of allotted lands and cases where pattas have not been issued to owners or those cases which are still under litigation.
    
18. 
    Distribution of all ceiling surplus land should be in the name of both husband and wife, on a joint basis, as that would help control benami land. Land ceiling laws should ensure gender equity.
    
19. 
    While making allotment of ceiling surplus land to the landless poor persons, the definition of landless poor person shall be taken as one who owns no land. In case such person is not available in the village, a person who owns a land of not more than 1 acre of wet land or 2 acres of dry land be treated as a Landless Poor person.
    
20. 
    In order to bring newly irrigated lands under the purview of Ceiling laws, these lands should be reclassified in consultation with the Revenue Department and Gram Sabhas.
    
21. 
    A group should be set up, composed of Gram Sabha members and revenue functionaries who identify benami and farzi transactions.
    
22. 
    The allotment of ceiling surplus land to the landless poor shall be done free of cost as in the case of assignment of Government lands.
    
23. 
    With computerization of land records, separate files should be opened in respect of actual and suspected evaders of ceiling law, so that their lands held in different districts could be consolidated in one file, for the purpose of imposition of one ceiling unit.
    
24. 
    Land ceiling should take in to account the local environment such as reserved areas where indigenous people are residing.
    
25. 
    Huge amount of government lands have been encroached by politically and economically powerful players for which there is no reasonable estimate. State governments must be advised to undertake an assessment of this on a fast track basis.
    
26. 
    Substantial amounts of lands were acquired for industrial and non-agricultural purposes however, field visits indicate that substantial amounts have not been utilised till date. Such lands must be reclaimed without delay and distributed back to the marginalized and the needy according to a priority basis.
    
27. 
    For addressing problems relating to land, single windows approach to be provided by the administration.
    
28. 
    Restrictions on land leasing within ceiling limits should be removed to help improving poor people’s access to land through lease market and also for improved utilization of available land, labour and capital.  However, there should be legal safeguards in the lease contracts that would protect the small and marginal farmers, and a clear recording of all leases, including share cropping.
    

10. 
    Wasteland: A Broad Category and a Skewed Definition
    

1.10.1 On the eve of independence, state owned vast tracts of land, to which were added large areas of uncultivated wastelands taken over during abolition of intermediaries from thousands of villages which were controlled by them. By definition, they are termed as ‘lands which are degraded and cannot fulfill their life-sustaining potential. And wastelands can result from inherent/imposed disabilities such as location, environment, chemical and physical properties of the soil or financial or management constraints’.¹¹

2. 
   The definition of wasteland has beenn problematic so far. The government website mentions that, given certain investment, it is possible that degraded lands can be reclaimed for productive use. This definition only implies that wastelands constitute those lands which are either not cultivated or are difficult to cultivate. Wastelands, therefore do not mean that they are unproductive. It is only a technical concept that suggests that these lands do not have life-sustaining potential but studies show that waste lands comprise various categories and some categories are useful for cultivation as well.
   

1.10.3 Currently, the total area of wastelands is estimated to be 63.85 million hectares which is 20.17% of the total geographical area. Out of this total wastelands 30% fall under the category of ‘land with or without scrub’, (this is 1,94,014.29 hectares). Another, 22% (1,40,652 ha) of the total wastelands fall under the category of under utilised/degraded notified forest land. Sands/inland and coastal area constitute 7.8% (50,021 ha) of the total wasteland area. Waterlogged and marshy lands constitute 2.5% (16,568 ha) of the total wasteland. Degraded pastures and grazing land constitute 4.08% (25,979 ha) of the total wastelands. These kinds of wastelands are not for cultivation but they do support a substantial rural and forest population serving them in a number of other ways. As no recognition of these wastelands are to be seen in the definition of the government, there have been hardly any surveys which can assess the economic significance of these wastelands in sustaining rural and forest population.

1.10.4 As the government had the proprietary rights over these ‘wastelands’, after independence under the agenda of land reforms, government began to concentrate on trying to bring these lands under vegetation cover by changing the physical and inherent characteristics of these wastelands. Till March 2002, 5.97 million hectares of wastelands have been distributed to the landless poor households. The distribution of government wastelands was most vigorously implemented in the state of Andhra Pradesh which has a very high percentage of landless labourers. The state has distributed 1.7 million hectares of government wasteland, while UP has distributed 1 million hectare of wasteland and the states of Gujarat, Karnataka and Bihar each account for 9 percent or more of the land distributed nationally.¹²
1.11 Major Issues Relating to Wastelands
1.11.1 There has not been much opposition to the redistributive programmes of wastelands from the landed elite because it has been found that, in practice, these wastelands are also under encroachment, which need to be cleared before the intended beneficiaries can take possession of the distributed holding.

2. 
   Encroachments: The process of encroachment of wastelands is as old as land grabbing before enactment of ceiling legislations. At the time of the abolition of the intermediary interests it was presumed that the corpus of wastelands acquired from the Zamindars would be used to provide access to land to the landless as it had been enjoined under the goal of ‘land to the tillers’. While a part of this corpus was certainly used to provide land to the landless, it has not always been the case and such land have been treated a property of the government to be disposed of in manner that suited its convenience for an assortment of purposes. There are instances where the government auctioned the lands to the highest bidder instead of distributing it to agriculture workers. One of the recent examples is of Tamil Nadu.
   

1.11.3 In 2003, the government of Tamil Nadu started a Comprehensive Wasteland Development Programme. A major component of the programme was the development of about 2 million hectares of government wasteland by involving the corporate sector, small companies and co-operatives. The programme involved 30 year leases to the corporate houses for which a “normative” ceiling of 1000 acres has been fixed. The wasteland would be developed for orchards, medicinal and aromatic plants, horticulture and other types of commercial agriculture for commercial purposes by the companies who have forward linkages with market and storage facilities, etc. However, there has been no clear definition as to the kind of wastelands to be developed. In one government order, it was supposed to cover only cultivable wastes and fallows leaving out pasture lands but on ground, grazing lands have also been included. It has been found that the government order under consideration is at variance with the Tamil Nadu Land Reforms Act, the Land Ceiling Act as well as the Panchayati Raj Act. This step of the state government, it is alleged, is also prejudicial to the employment and livelihood interests of the poor.¹³

1.11.4 In Andhra Pradesh, there are huge extents of Lanka lands situated in the upper and down stream of Godavari and Krishna River Basins. The existence of these Lanka lands change from time to time. These are formed due to erosion of the rivers. The permanent and semi-permanent lands are classified as A & B Class Lankas and are situated mostly in East and West Godavari districts. The lands in Krishna district are classified as C class Lankas, temporary in nature. The beneficiaries of these lands are not granted D form pattas but are granted Eksal lease. The experience from Krishna district is that the structures of these lands frequently change due to floods, accretion happens sometimes and some Lanka lands disappear. Eksal lease of these lands are usually given to the Societies of weaker sections instead of individual leases. No water tax is levied on these lands, but Lanka Land Rentals (LLR) is fixed and collected from Societies. The SC Corporation is granting loans to the Societies for development of Lanka Lands and also for sanction of bore wells.
1.11.5 Previously, when there was the VAO system, checking and registering of encroachments on these lands was regularly done which has now faltered. Most of the Societies are either defunct now or are being managed by big landlords. They are not paying LRR regularly. It is also noticed that some Societies are alienating these Lanka lands to third parties who are obviously private procurers. ¹⁴
1.11.6 During the 1970s and 80s, under the insistence from government of India, millions of acres of government wastelands were transferred to forest department for social forestry schemes. Since most officials of the forest departments would find it more beneficial to plant saplings on the land developed and cultivated by agricultural labourers rather than undeveloped, undulating lands far off, poor peasants and agricultural labourers came to be seen as encroachers. This was because land designated as forest could be taken away without the approval of Central Government. Hence, it posed a hurdle to the cultivators.
1.11.7 In 1980, the National Forest Policy, 1988 observed the increasing trend in encroachments on forest lands and stated that these should not be regularized. A Supreme Court judgment of April 11, 2001, (S.P.No. 202/95) further elaborated the management of government forest lands where the onus of regularizing the forest villages and other encroachments into revenue villages was placed entirely on the state government. The government of India has not allowed any encroachment after 23.11.2001 as the SC imposed a ban on that date. Given such a blanket ban, encroachment under its broad net dismissed all traditional land and forest rights which were enjoyed mostly by the tribal population of some of the states. This structural procedure against encroachment has hit mostly the tribal population of these districts hard, as in most cases the eligibility criteria laid down by the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 have not been adhered to.¹⁵

Bhoodan Lands

11. 
    Background
    

1.12.1 The control and ownership of land determines the institution of class. Hence, the intervention of Bhoodan did not initiate anything new, but rather maintained and sustained the existing social fabric. Empirical research conducted independently showed during the movement, that in Vidarbha region, 14 percent of the land records had errors to the benefit of the donors. 24 percent of the land pledged had never been effectively turned into Bhoodan. The number of Gramdan argued to be 160,000 in the region was actually pledges of village gifts and had not been implemented or registered under the state of law. When Jay Prakash Narayan took up intensive development work in the Musahar district of Bihar, he found that none of the requirements of Gramdan pledges were fulfilled.¹⁶

1.12.2 The land donated was mostly of poor quality which was found unprofitable to retain even by the most generous donors. Also, as in Rajasthan villages pledged reverted to the original owners because of no claimers or litigation. In Orissa, there were instances of no proper registration of the allotted land especially in tribal areas, resulting in reverting of land to donors. In Bihar, large tracts of donated lands were forest lands.
1.13 Current Status of Bhoodan Lands
1.13.1 The last comprehensive information for the country as a whole was presented at the Revenue Ministers’ Conference in 1992. The data which were presented at this meeting were obtained by the Ministry of Rural Development from the Sarva Seva Sangh. According to this source, currently, 45.90 lakh acres was donated till date all over India and 23.23 lakh acres was distributed. Area fit for cultivation out of the distributed area was 11.01 lakh acres and area unfit for distribution was 18.07 lakh acres.

14. 
    Major Issues Relating tyo Bhoodan Lands
    

1.14.1 Notwithstanding all the anomalies, Bihar happened to be the state where the movement was institutionalized and government bodies were created to administer it. The government of Bihar in 1954 had instituted the Bihar Bhoodan Act, 1954, and the Bihar Land Reforms Commission which was formed under the aegis of the Act presented its interim report on June 04, 2007, which took stock of the anomalies in the Bhoodan form of land redistribution in consultation with the Bihar Bhoodan Yagna Committee. The basic problems which were identified are briefly presented below.

1.14.2 The land so far donated and recorded was 6, 48,476 acres, out of which 2,55,347 acres had been distributed to 3,15,454 families. About 2,78,320 acres of land were found not suitable for distribution. However, there was no authentic verification of this areas declared unsuitable and there is room for proper investigation. And resources for authentic services should be provided by the government. Still an area of 1,14,708 acres found suitable for distribution but not yet distributed.
1.14.3 There is need for effective administrative structure for the management of Bhoodan lands. The Land Reforms Commissioner could decide on the redeployment of his staff for this purpose. The primary objective of this campaign would be to reconcile the figures relating to the Bhoodan lands maintained by both the offices.
1.14.4 There are instances like the one in Rohtas district where the average area distributed per family was 7.8 acres, about 11,131 acres distributed to some institutions whose authentically is not clear and keeping another 15,000 acres yet to be distributed. There are also discrepancies between the records maintained by the Revenue Department and the Bhoodan Yagna Committee on the extent of acquisition and distribution of Bhoodan land. All these suggest the need for proper verification.
1.15 Findings from the Field

1.15.1 Fortunately, the query sheet with regard to Bhoodan lands, sent to the state department of Bihar was responded to. From the responses obtained, the following points could be taken as a major task demanding attention:

1. 
   The Bhoodan Yagna Committee has been constituted by the Government by a notification and the Act does not spell out as to who will be the members of the Committee. Thus the selection of members of the Bhoodan Yagna Committee is within the discretion of the government and the experience has been that often undeserving persons are appointed. . This loose end has to be tied up and a clear composition of the Committee should be notified which would involve experts, locals, members of civil societies who are engaged in the movement and government officials with experience.
   
2. 
   The jurisdiction and activity of the Committee begins when someone voluntarily donates land which is then vested with the Committee. However, the verification and confirmation of the donated land comes from the Revenue authorities. This again allows enough space for manipulation. Therefore, the Committee has to undertake all the tasks involved by itself. It has to physically survey the land donated, confirm the same, oversee the whole process of making the new pattas, hand it over to the selected assignees and effect the delivery of possession in its immediatel presence. This requires that the members of the Committee may comprise people who are skilled in revenue functions. It is further suggested that the work staff of the Committee should be increased as per the requiementes from its current 112. This is likely to reduce the burden of the revenue officials who can use the time for other pressing purposes.
   
3. 
   The Committee has remained understaffed and relied on the revenue authorities for verification with the result that such revenue officials have connived to report that the land is not fit for cultivation. In some other instances the Khatas the superior quality land have been allowed to be substituted with the inferior lands.
   

Recommendations

1. 
   There should be a time-frame for the completion of the remaining task. Adequate resources to be given to the Bhoodan Yagna Committee as Grant-in-Aid for recruiting Amins/Surveyors from the open market on the contract for 2 years. The number of Amin/Surveyor to be recruited will be worked out jointly by the Chairman of the Committee and the Land Reforms Commissioner.
   
2. 
   For the payment of remuneration to be paid to the Deputy Collectors to be appointed on contract, the money to be placed on the disposal of Divisional Commissioners. The number of Deputy Collectors to be recruited would be around 38 (number of districts + 10 percent).
   
3. 
   The Land Reforms Commissioner should be directly responsible for completing this campaign within the time frame indicated above. He should be in constant consultation with the Chairman of the Committee to ensure smooth and proper implementation of the scheme. Now, that the program of total verification of all the problematic issues related to Bhoodan would be undertaken, this point of ensuring possession to the grantees should be given appropriate priority, thereby, eliminating one of the causes of rural friction and possible unrest.
   
4. 
   Specially appointed Deputy Collectors should initiate ejectment proceedings against ineligible persons under Section 21of the B.B.Y. Act 1954. In case, they come up against any insuperable legal hurdle, the matter of repeal of Subsection (3) of Sec 15 may jointly be examined by the Committee and the Revenue Department for appropriate remedial action.
   

1.16 Women and Land Rights
1.16.1 In spite of formal equality with men under the law, Indian women continue to face wide-ranging disadvantages, whether it is in terms of property rights, workforce participation, educational opportunities, access to health care or political representation. India has some of the worst indicators of gender inequality in the world, including a very low female-male ratio, a major gender bias in literacy rates, and a low share of women in the labour force. Gender related development indicators such as maternal mortality rates and sex-selective abortion have thrown a poor light on the predicament of Indian women.
1.16.2 The situation is much more severe when the situation of women is assessed in terms of land rights. In the past, the focus of creating new land institutions has been to promote equity and growth between households, with land ownership and management continuing to vest in the males, reflecting gendered control of land and assets in most parts of India. Hardly any attention had been paid to legal and other institutional impediments in the acquisition of land through inheritance allotment, tenancy or other means by women who continue to be assetless, although a very large proportion of rural female workers are cultivators, and a significant proportion of farming households are headed by women, due to male migration, death, desertion or other reasons. In such cases, absence of secure titles could impede incentive, investment or access to inputs and credit.¹⁷

17.