‘Under new laws, agricultural land can only be sold to agriculturists from within J&K’.
“Government has repealed 11 land laws that existed in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir replacing the old, regressive, intrinsically contradictory and outdated laws with a set of modern, progressive and people friendly provisions,” the government said on Monday.
“The new land laws will not only afford protection to over 90% of the land in J&K from being alienated to outsiders but will also help revamp the agriculture sector foster, rapid industrialization, aid economic growth and create jobs in J&K.”
This was stated by the Principal Secretary Information and government spokesman Rohit Kansal at a press conference in Jammu today. Kansal made these comments while interacting with the media on a host of issues related to the UT of Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Adaptation of State Laws) Fifth Order, 2020.Elaborating, Kansal remarked that the repealed laws were made to serve the old agrarian based economy and were required to be modified for modern economic needs. “Besides, they were beset with ambiguities, contradictions and redundancies and in many cases, were clearly regressive. For instance, a number of laws had contradictions leading to scope for discretionary interpretation and rent seeking e.g. ‘Family’ was defined differently in different laws, provision of alienation and conversion of land were different in different laws and the ceiling of 182 kanals fixed in Big Landed Estates Abolition Act was superseded by 100 standard kanals in the Agrarian Reforms act, 1976, yet both provisions continued to coexist creating contradiction and confusion.”
