PM-led National Land Reforms Panel has never met since its formation

NEW DELHI: The prime minister-led National Land Reforms Council has not held a single meeting since it was formed in January 2008, a lapse that does not square with the government and the Congress' stated agenda.

The council, constituted after agitations by landless villagers and tribals, is yet to fix a date since it put off its first scheduled meeting in October 2011 because of the prime minister's three consecutive foreign trips.

Rights activist PV Rajagopal had earlier this year threatened to resign from the council, which comprises nine chief ministers and six civil society representatives, because of its failure to transact any business for over four years.

Though Rajagopal, who heads the grassroots rights group Ekta Parishad, was eventually convinced to change his decision and stay in the council, there is no word from the Prime Minister's Office on just when the council will start work.

This remains the case even as the Congress, which leads the ruling coalition at the Centre, has vowed to address the concerns of the landless and the marginalised. Recurring agitations over land acquisition have also stalled industrial expansion, even as the government has invited the wrath of both the poor land owners and the companies whose projects have been deferred or shelved.

The council, under the chairmanship of the prime minister, was set up to make specific recommendations on policies, speedier disposal of land-related court cases and the judicial forum related to such cases. It was to be supplemented by a committee, headed by then rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, on agrarian relations between the states and the unfinished task of land reforms.

The committee was further divided into seven sub-groups to examine various aspects of policies relating to land. Though these sub-groups have since submitted their reports - proposing a National Land Reforms Policy and radical policy changes, including revision in land ceilings - these reports need to be examined by the council.

The committee is said to have recommended limiting of personal land holdings to irrigated 10 acres and non-irrigated 15 acres. It had also called for lowering the ceilings for absentee landlords. However, the Planning Commission has expressed some reservations over the committee's recommendations.

The commission feels that distribution of land into small units stands the risk of increasing fragmentation of holdings and thus adversely affecting productivity.


It has also complained that determining absentee landlordism, where some family member is looking after the land, would be difficult.

Though most states had enacted laws for land reforms back in the 1950s, to replace 'landlordism' with 'land to the tiller,' equitable distribution of land is still an unfinished task. While Kerala, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tripura have been able to implement land reforms, other states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are yet to break free of their feudal land ownership patterns.