Cabinet to take up land sale bill

NEW DELHI: The cabinet is set to consider on Thursday a policy aimed at helping the government unlock the value of its unused land in a transparent manner.

Under the proposed comprehensive land sale policy, which also covers land owned by statutory bodies, surplus land having a market value of less than Rs 50 crore will be sold through e-auctions. Sale of land of higher value will require cabinet approval. The government holds large tracts of unused land through its ministries, statutory bodies and public sector companies.

However, in the absence of a clear policy, it seldom gets a good value from their sales, mainly because of murky deals. According to estimates, the major ports in the country have a combined land asset of 258,000 acres. Similarly, the Airport Authority of India has a land pile of about 20,000 hectares while the defence services together hold 17 lakh acres.

The proposed land alienation policy, an offshoot of the Ashok Chawla Committee on allocation of natural resources, will allow the government to gain from the rise in price of land all over the country through outright sale or leasing. Separately, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs is likely to consider a proposal to sell an additional 6.17 million tonne of foodgrains through fair price shops to over 10.46 crore above poverty line families this fiscal.