PAGD rejects Clarification of Government over new land laws

Srinagar Nov 3: While rejecting the official statement of MHA dated 26th, the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) on Tuesday claimed that the main agenda to implement new land laws is aimed to bring demographic changes and to disempowering the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
In a statement issued to CNS, the alliance has termed the land laws regime of Jammu and Kashmir as most progressive, pro people and pro former in the entire Indian Subcontinent.
“Jammu and Kashmir was first in the country to implement the concept of “land to tiller” by enacting Big Landed Estates Abolition Act 1952 followed by Agrarian Reforms Act 1976 restricting the land holding to twelve and half acres and ending the exploitative practice of “absentee landlordism” and whosoever calls it archaic would be guilty of ignorance of the history of Jammu and Kashmir. It is because of the timely land reforms that there are no starvation deaths occur in Jammu and Kashmir, no farmers suicides have been ever reported from Jammu and Kashmir and everyone in Jammu and Kashmir has available three fundamental necessities- food, clothing and shelter, the position that is now sought to be reversed by making massive assault on the land law regime,” the statement reads.
PAGD questioned that how alienation of Land Act be termed as archaic when it prohibited transfer of land to a non State Subject, thus protecting the interests of Permanent Residents of Jammu and Kashmir and at the same time made a provision for transfer of land by mortgage to organisations like Industrial Development Bank of India, Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India to keep pace with industrial development?
They added that the repeal of the Act now allows the land to be transferred to non State Subjects, denuding the residents of Jammu and Kashmir of their most precious rights.
The abolition of Big Landed Estates Abolition Act 1952 and amendments in Agrarian Reforms Act 1976 is against farmers and to remove the ceiling on acquisition. The changes in Development Act and creation of “security zones” to avoid adherence to the rules and regulations as regards construction activities in such zones and exclusion of oversight by expert bodies, environmental activists and civil society groups is bound to put at peril ecosystem in fragile environmental areas like Gulmarg, Pahalgam and Sonamarg already under pressure beyond their carrying capacity” reads the statement.