Chandigarh, July 18 (IANS) Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Cheema on Friday said the state’s land pooling scheme is farmer friendly and based on mutual consent.

“Not a single inch of land will be forcibly taken from any farmer. Whether to give land or not is entirely up to the farmers’ will,” Cheema told the media here.

The Finance Minister’s clarification comes in the wake of farmers’ objections against the land pooling scheme of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.

He criticised the Congress, the BJP and the Akali Dal, and said that during the previous governments in the past decade and a half, thousands of illegal colonies were developed in Punjab, where even basic facilities like roads, electricity, water, and sewerage were absent.

Lakhs of people faced difficulties regarding property registrations. Hundreds of people lost lakhs of rupees to builders’ fraud, which led to the ruin of many families.

Cheema said in the last 10 years, with the collusion of senior leaders of the Akali-BJP and the Congress governments, land mafias illegally developed colonies on approximately 30,000 acres of land across various cities in the state, committing scams and frauds worth billions.

The direct beneficiaries of these scams were land mafias, builders, and the ministers and MLAs of previous governments, while common people were deprived of even basic facilities.

For all of this, the Akali-BJP alliance and the Congress governments are directly responsible, he said.

Cheema said keeping in mind the hardships faced by common people, the AAP government decided to acquire land itself through a land pooling policy.

“This will benefit both farmers and the common people. Farmers will receive 1000 square yards of residential land and 200 square yards of commercial plots per acre, whose value in the next few years will be approximately four times higher than current market rates.”

At the same time, under this scheme, the common man will get housing with better and modern facilities because the government will ensure the construction of roads, sewerage, electricity, water, and public parks in these areas, and complete compliance with housing laws will be maintained so that people do not face any problems in the future.

Cheema said farmers will receive another major benefit from this scheme: when the government acquires land, they will not only get financial benefits but also social security.

All farmers whose land is acquired under this scheme will be given an assistance amount of Rs 50,000 per acre per year for at least three years or until the land is developed so that they do not face any financial difficulties during the construction period.

In contrast, during previous governments builders and land mafias used to forcibly purchase land from farmers at throwaway prices and later never provided any financial assistance to them. Thousands of such cases have come to light, the Finance Minister added.

–IANS

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