The Gujarat government is committed to curb land grabbing activities in the state. It has enacted a new law on land grabbers and land mafias to bring justice to poor families and curb such anti-social and unauthorised illegal activities.
The bill was tabled by state Revenue Minister Rajendra Trivedi. The bill proposes that the word ‘land’ in the original act ” shall not include the land in respect of which applications for grants are pending on the date of commencement of this Act under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers, Act, 2006.”
There has been another important amendment proposed which was about the provision of appeals against orders issued by special courts constituted under the Land Grabbing Act, the minister said.
The Assembly then passed the Gujarat Agricultural University (Amendment) Bill that proposes to rename Gujarat Organic Agricultural University as Gujarat Natural Farming and Organic Agricultural University.
Total 499 applications received for land grabbing
After the law came into force, the state government gave details of Kareli’s significant performance, the revenue minister said. He said that under Gujarat Land Grabbing Act, 122 applications have been received, out of which 318 applications related to land amounting to 1016.71 hectares have been approved by the committee. Out of which 3 FIRs. Action has been taken against 8 people. Chargesheets have also been filed in 4 out of the total cases.
Similarly, a total of 499 applications have been received for land grabbing in government lands. Out of this, 181 applications related to 2.5 hectares of land have been approved by the committee. Action has been taken against 8 people and chargesheets have been filed in 4 cases.