Land pooling policy to benefit farmers, says Finance Minister Cheema

Though the AAP refrained from attending the all-party meeting called by the SKM, Finance Minister Harpal Cheema later clarified why their government had brought the land pooling policy.

He said the scheme was completely farmer-friendly and based on mutual consent. Not a single inch of land would be forcibly taken from any farmer. Whether to give land or not was entirely up to the farmers’ will. He criticised the Congress, BJP and Akali Dal and said during the previous governments, in the past decade and a half, thousands of illegal colonies were developed in Punjab, where even basic facilities like roads, electricity, water and sewerage were absent. Land mafias illegally developed colonies on approximately 30,000 acres of land across various cities in Punjab.

The direct beneficiaries of these scams were land mafias, builders and the ministers and MLAs of previous governments, while common people were deprived of even basic facilities. Cheema said keeping in mind the hardships faced by common people, the AAP government decided to acquire land itself through a land pooling policy. This would benefit both farmers and common people.

Farmers would receive 1000 square yards of residential land and 200 square yards of commercial plots per acre, whose value in the next few years would be approximately four times higher than current market rates.