Govt fails to acquire land due to ‘outdated’ Act
The state government continues to follow the J&K Development Act-1970, which has an outdated land acquisition provisions, although the population of Jammu city is expected to touch 19 lakh in 2021.
The government has also confessed that the failure of Municipal Corporations, Urban Development Department and other agencies to match with rapidly growing demands of residential, health and educational sectors is mainly due to these agencies not being able to acquire land for the proposed projects, while responding to the cut motion brought by MLA Chaman Lal Gupta in the Legislative Assembly.
Urban Development Minister Nawang Rigzin Jora responded to the query and said, In Jammu and Kashmir due to lack of such provision in the prevalent Act, it could not adopt different models like the town planning scheme, land pooling and redistribution scheme as a land management tool as adopted by several states in the country due to difficulty in land acquisition.
In the absence of any future planning, the Master Plan for Jammu-2021 which was notified under SRO-263 in August, 2004 urban bodies are facing problems in finding land to create necessary infrastructure for the growing population. The local area notified under the 2021 plan is 288 sq km, comprising of 221 mohallas/villages in 10 divisions.
Essential amendment to the Act is required, to execute the Master Plan proposals. Till 2000, the city was having an area of just 32 sq km and in 2003 the government approved the city limits to 117 sq km. The total number of wards in the old city is 71, comprising of 23 wards, which was divided into 48 wards and 23 new wards were added, which are being managed by the JMC, while major projects are being looked after by the Jammu Development Authority (JDA) and Economic Reconstruction Agency (ERA).
According to Chaman Lal Gupta to accommodate different kinds of physical infrastructure and public utility systems, there would be a huge need for housing, employment, social infrastructure, organised shopping centres, transport, adequate arrangements and reservations. “A set of coordinated policies are needed to develop the city so that it can handle the expanding population,” Gupta said.
Source: The Tribune
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