State rushes to acquire and

MUMBAI: Maharashtra’s urban land ceiling department is seeking more manpower to speed up land acquisition. Tasked with notifying and acquiring surplus land under the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA), the department has requested the government to provide it with additional staff so that the Act could be implemented more effectively before it gets repealed. The ULCRA is expected to be repealed during the winter session of the legislature beginning December 4.

“We have received requests from the collectorates of most of the nine offices for additional staff. Their argument is that the designated staff are under too much pressure since a lot more land has still to be acquired,” an urban development official told ET.

In Greater Mumbai alone, around 15,000 acres of land are eligible for acquisition. “It’s humanly impossible to acquire even half of this land in 3-4 months with our present staff,” an official said.

The demand for additional staff has, however, surprised a section of the bureaucracy. This section, which has been pushing for repeal of ULCRA, points to the host of officials already deployed by the government to notify and attach surplus land. “As many as 27 officials under the revenue department have been designated as competent authorities to notify and acquire land. These officials are supposed to take care of all the urban centres where the Act is in force,” said an official.

These 27 designated officials were additionally pressed into service by the government early this year, after it became certain that the ULCRA’s days were numbered. “In fact, the staff got designated as competent authorities because the government wanted to expedite land acquisition. Instead of scaling up the staff, there should be a review of what the department has achieved so far,” another official said. At every district collectorate, an additional collector heads the ULC department staffed with a sizeable number of people.

The ULC officials said the state had acquired only 1,225 acres since 1976. Of this, 230 acres are in Mumbai. Among other eight urban conglomerates, the state has acquired more land in Sangli and Nagpur. “In all, around 900 acres of land have been acquired in the past two years, and much of it before the 27 designated officials were pressed into service,” said the official.

With the Act slated for burial in December, the state wants to acquire as much land as possible during the three months. Even when the Act goes, the land already acquired would remain with the government.