Rajan Gandhi
Jammu and Kashmir has a total geographic area of 101387 Sq. Kms while Jammu region is having 26 percent of the State’s total geographical area, it accounts for 55 percent of its total population load of which Jammu District has the highest share of population.
With rapid pace of urbanization and development of economic activities in Jammu, the city’s influence has been increasing in range and impact. Jammu’s urban agglomeration has been very fast which can be adjudged from the trend of decadal change in the urban population even in its adjoining tehsils as many villages of Bishnah, Samba, RS Pura and Jammu tehsils have already been engulfed by the sprawl of Jammu city. The new Jammu Master Plan spreads over an area of 652.33 sq. km from an existing 305 sq. kms and includes the whole Municipal Corporation of Jammu, Municipal Committees of Ghomanhasan, Bishnah, Bari Brahmana and Vijaypur with total 324 villages included which also include 103 villages of extended local area of JDA. Growth of unauthorized settlements and mushrooming of squatters are viewed as a major planning challenge in the sustained growth of city. Disconnect between the increasing pressure of population growth and city infrastructure is a major concern impeding Jammu to become a vibrant city with good quality of living. Insufficient road widths, inefficient public transport, lack of parking, congestion, missing links etc result in a very poor transport system in Jammu. Rampant land use violations and building encroachments which are wide spread in all the four corners of the city. Degeneration of the old city, deterioration of existing rivers, water bodies and other natural resources is noticeable. At one shop per 50 persons, Jammu is expected to have 40,300 shops creating roughly one lakh jobs. No doubt land is a non-renewable resource and should be utilized very carefully as such there is always competition between activities for space and therefore the supply of land is relatively inelastic in urban areas. Due to ever increasing demand of urban development in Jammu, the urban land market is very volatile and accelerates the process of conversion of agricultural land.
With projects like AIIMS ,Metro, Ring road , Tawi River Front, widening of Jammu-Akhnoor road already sanctioned everything apparently is perfect but factually all of them are stuck up due to non-acquisition of land so much so that even after a lapse of more than three years not a single foundation stone has been laid of these projects leave alone the completion. Now the million dollar question is with JMC -2032 already through with so much future projections, where has all the land gone? Reasons are not hard to find and in the first glance government itself seems to be the culprit. Jammu Development Authority got 75,833 kanals and 4 marlas of Government land which was to be transferred to it under Jammu and Kashmir Development Act-1970. It was the greatest asset which could have been utilized to change the destiny of Jammu city. Unfortunately, the land was transferred only on papers without identification or physical demarcation and formal handover. Consequently most of the land over the period of time has fallen prey to encroachments thereby defeating the objective of planned growth of Jammu region. Our government has already admitted in assembly that 1,510 acres of land of JDA has been encroached and JDA is yet to demarcate 6,818 acres of land out of total 9,479 acres, meant for development, given to it in 1973.However, as compared to massive encroachment of land in Jammu belonging to JDA, only over few acres of land in Srinagar is under encroachment despite militancy. There can be two conclusions only, either it has been a deliberate attempt to hamper development of Jammu region or the authorities are hand in glove with land mafia. The inaction in handing over the land to JDA has also been seriously viewed by the Hon’ble High Court which passed directions for demarcation and identification and subsequently handing over of the same by revenue authorities to JDA.
With so much encroached land another super goof up was introduced in 2001 by which the government had enacted – The Jammu and Kashmir State Lands Act – also named “Roshni Act” to generate whopping Rs 25,000 crore by vesting ownership rights over state land also called Nazool land. The idea was to sell the state land at market rates to the people who had illegally encroached upon it. Though the legislation was passed in 2001, it only came into force in 2004. This scheme was re-introduced by Ghulam Nabi Azad-led coalition government in 2007 and turned out to be the biggest scandal in the state’s history. A government initiative which was meant to boost the financial resources of Jammu and Kashmir seems to have gone horribly wrong. Conceived to fetch the equity for shaping fortunes of the state and transforming it into power exporting region, the much-hyped Roshni scheme got murkier with each passing year. What went wrong with the Act which was termed as “revolutionary step” by the successive governments? As per the rules the “authorized occupants” owning residential structures on state or nazool land up to 2 kanals were required to pay only 25 percent of the value of the land determined by the committee and 40 percent up to 10 kanals. For authorized overstayed and unauthorized occupants, the rates were fixed at 35 percent and 50 percent of the value of the land. In commercial category, authorized, authorized overstayed and unauthorized occupants had to pay 30 percent, 45 percent and 60 percent of the value of the land respectively. In case of institutions – education/ religious/charitable/ social institutions/ trusts/societies and political parties the rates were fixed at 15 percent and 25 percent of the market value of the land. The scheme provided for rewards and penalties- a rebate of highest 25 percent for payments within three months and a highest penalty of 35 percent for payments in 2 years. But the blow to the Roshni scheme was dealt in February 2007 when the then government introduced the scheme in legislature fixing a token amount of Rs 100/per kanal only as documentation charges for the agriculture land. Though the government tried to justify the move saying 19 lakh cultivators would get benefited but practically the state has less than 16 lakh cultivators and only 16.27 percent of them had encroached upon state land. According to CAG report tabled in legislative assembly in 2014, 48,160 kanals of land was approved up to March 2013 for transfer, major portion (3,40,091 Kanal) about 97.68 % was categorized as “agricultural land” and subsequently transferred free of cost and no stamp duty was charged while transferring such a huge portion of land. The precious state land got thus transferred to the encroachers and government could muster a few crores in return, nowhere near the targeted amount.
The most tragic part is that now for every development project government has to purchase land from these very encroachers at extravagant price. Numbers of litigations are also pending in courts with no follow up effort from government to get its land back. With even Centre unhappy with the slow digitization of revenue records as reasons for the delay are too obvious. Government should think upon getting all the state land back through ordinance, there can be no excuse for not reverting back this faulty scheme. The present planning legislation is very archaic and has been rendered irrelevant. It is pre-requisite that the J&K Regional and Urban Planning and Development Act be enacted at the earliest with a separate section on the constitution, powers and functions of a Metropolitan Region Development Authority. The Act shall supersede all other legislations presently in operation in the planning area. Situation is really precarious as each and every project is in standstill position with no information when these projects will see the light of the day. It seems the government right now is clueless about the present mess with the result Jammu development projects are stalled right now. Jammu is platform of progress for other areas of the state and as such development of other areas also gets affected with cascading effect. The effects of delay are quite visible especially in health sector in the absence of AIIMS , public transport missing metro badly and no new housing project undertaken by either JDA or Housing Board . With each passing day and elections approaching fast our MPs don’t have any explanation for the delay as no project has moved in right direction on ground till now. Our politicians must understand that only announcements of new projects cannot guarantee votes. State government has to act decisively as there can be no excuse to halt Jammu’s development.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right, but neither does one.”
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