Haryana junks plan to allot Aravali land to villagers for agriculture

GURUGRAM: The Haryana government has withdrawn its two-year-old plan to consolidate 3,000 acres in Kot village in the Aravalis and allot it to local residents for farming after it was found that more than 2,500 acres fell under the category of “gair mumkin pahar”, a protected land where any kind of construction or cutting of trees is prohibited.
Environmentalists, who backed the move, said this was the fourth time in the past decade that consolidation of small patches of land in the area had been stopped. Under the Consolidation Act, the Haryana government pools small patches of common land and then allocates them to villagers for farming. However, it has often been seen that the villagers sell off these plots to private builders, who develop farmhouses in the forested area. The government’s latest proposal to consolidate the Kot village land was in February 2019.

The revenue department agreed that had the land falling under the “gair mumkin pahar” category been allotted to villagers, it could “wrongly benefit certain influential outsider-purchasers”.
“The aim of the Consolidation Act is to pool land for the betterment of agriculture and common purposes of the villagers. The objective of this Act would be defeated in case land under ‘gair mumkin pahan’ is included in the scheme. So, the plan has been withdrawn,” said Amna Tasneem, director, consolidation of holdings.
Environmentalists pointed out that the hilly area of Kot village fell in the buffer zone of Mangar Bani, a protected area. “This is the fourth time that the consolidation process in Kot village has been stopped on the grounds that the move could be misused. Let’s hope this is the final time,” said Chetan Agarwal, a forest analyst.
Sarvadaman Oberoi, an environmentalist, listed a few instances. “The consolidation scheme has been misused in Aravali villages such as Mangar, Bandhwari, Ankhir and Mewla Maharajpur to create private plots inside forests. It must be rolled back.”
Not just environmentalists, villagers too backed the government move to withdraw the plan. “The government is planning to eventually privatise all the common land in villages,” said Kesar Singh, the husband of Kot sarpanch Mundresh Devi. The villagers, he added, had approached the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and written to the chief minister and the Centre against the move to consolidate common land.
According to the activists, this was the fourth attempt since 2011 to consolidate common village land.
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