1978 redux: Govt gives out land amid farm ferment

Pattas are documents given by the state government conferring ownership rights over land.

The state government has earmarked 10,000 acres of vested land across the state and estimates that more than 50,000 people will benefit from the scheme. It has fixed March 31 as the deadline to finish the project.

So far, pattas for 4,000 acres of land have been distributed and the number of beneficiaries had already crossed 30,000.

The government is citing two reasons for launching the redistribution scheme. At Singur, where Tata Motors is setting up a small-car plant, the government faced resistance from unrecorded sharecroppers who were fomenting because they thought they were losing their livelihood. The state government has now decided to compensate them at the same rate as recorded sharecroppers were.

The second reason that prompted the government to go for this change is the growing Maoist violence in the three districts, where acute poverty and lack of development are blamed for the rise of extremism.

Bhattacharjee had ordered the survey of vested land late last year and distribution began in the last week of December. Pattas have already been distributed at places such as Bankura’s Ranibandh. A land reforms commissioner is going to Purulia in the second week of March to distribute land at Bandwan, Bagmundi and Kashipur, spots of strong Maoist resistance in the past couple of years.

According to the Central Government’s reports, 11,00879 acres of land was distributed in West Bengal till March last year. And the number of beneficiaries stands at 28,29,935. In fact, the Left Front government, which began land reforms here in 1978, can boast of the fact that West Bengal accounts for more than 50 per cent of the total state land distributed among the landless in the entire country.