Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Hemant Khava was evicted from the Gujarat Legislative Assembly on Tuesday after raising concerns over faulty land surveys while wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Cancel Incorrect Land Surveys’.
Khava, representing Jamjodhpur, alleged that farmers in the state have been facing difficulties for the last 10 years due to errors in land measurement records.
He stated that in 2016 alone, over 25,000 applications were submitted regarding land survey errors. Out of a total of 83,000 applications filed in the past decade, only 13,000 have been resolved, while the remaining cases are still pending.
The AAP MLA further alleged that the surveys were conducted to favour individuals affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rather than addressing the concerns of farmers.
Khava asserted that despite the presence of 160 MLAs in the Assembly, he was suspended without violating any official rules, solely because of the T-shirt he wore to highlight the issue.
During the Assembly session, Khava cited a case from his constituency involving farmer Dev Navdariya from Modpar village in Lalpur taluka. Navdariya reportedly lost 2.8 acres of land from official records and, despite a decade of pursuing the matter with various government offices, has yet to receive justice.
In Jamnagar district, 83,467 applications regarding post-promulgation land record corrections have been submitted to the District Land Records (DLR) office over the past ten years.
Of these, 13,500 applications have resulted in changes to land ownership records. However, not a single application has led to corrections in village maps, which Khava argued is necessary for the errors to be properly resolved.
Khava also highlighted that in 2009-10, a private agency was tasked with conducting land surveys across Gujarat under the promulgation process. While the survey was completed within four years by 2014, the government has spent the past decade attempting to rectify the survey errors, with no clear timeline for resolution.
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