Soon, developers to keep land above18-acre limit

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 9

The state government is bringing in an ordinance which will allow realtors, commercial investors and industrialists to keep more than the permissible 18 acres. For this, it is amending the Punjab Land Reforms Act, 1972.

The Cabinet had approved an amendment to the Act last month. The matter is being examined by the legal and legislative departments, which are in the process drafting the ordinance.

Earlier this year, the Revenue Department had ordered that large tracts of agricultural land, acquired by investors for industrial projects that had failed to take off, be taken back and put to agricultural use.

The orders had created panic among investors, as the department began issuing notices to private individuals having large landholdings. The idea was to check the acquisition of land by “dubious” means to circumvent the law.

Subsequently, DCs in all districts were asked to scrutinise all cases of land being acquired beyond the permissible limit. The government, however, did not go for retrospective scrutiny of such cases.

It was to ensure that private individuals, who had bought cheap agricultural land beyond the limit for projects (hotels, hospitals, medical colleges, housing or other real estate projects) that failed to take off, did not get away by circumventing the land reforms Act.

The government wanted to reclaim surplus land and allot it to the other developers or investors.

Sources say the hue and cry created by affected individuals and companies has now forced the government to not only stop the scrutinisation of surplus land, but also amend Section 27 of the Punjab Land Reforms Act, 1972, to pave the way for seamless implementation of several pending infrastructure and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) projects.

The plea taken by the government is that when orders to exempt land from the Act were issued in 2011, the statutory rules describing the procedure, fees and competent authority were not finalised.

“The proposed amendment will take into consideration all these things — to prevent any adverse impact on infrastructure and SEZ projects approved in the past as well as projects that may be set up after approval under several state and Central laws. We propose to give a year to affected persons to get the change in land use, and then get the project off the ground,” a senior official said.