THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was only last week that Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had asked the Chandy Government to identify land for setting up a centre of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the state. But the government is yet to identify land for AIIMs, a situation which all mega projects such as monorail and the IIT are facing.
It has been pointed out that all the projects could have been taken up in a smooth manner if the government had prepared an inventory of all assignable lands (those that can be used for public purpose), which was mandatory as per the Land Assignment Rules.
Though the Kerala Land Assignment Rules and Assignment of Land in Municipal and Corporation Area Rules specify to maintain a record of all assignable lands in the respective regions, most of the revenue offices from the village office to the district are yet to make an inventory of the lands.
If the revenue offices had a clear record of all assignable lands, then there could have been no difficulty in getting these lands and a lot of time could have been saved, the officials said. The State Government starts identifying land only when some projects are introduced. As the rule specifies, a list of land reserved for government or public purposes and land available for assignment in each village should be prepared. After setting apart lands for future government or public purposes, 25 per cent of the land available for assignment in each village should be reserved for assignment to members of SC and ST.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India in its report on land management by the Kerala Government 2014 has noted that the details of assignable lands were not available in most of the Taluk offices. It said that the list of assignable land was not updated. When a land was to be assigned, the land was first included in the list of assignable land so as to enable the assigning authority to assign the land. Apart from this, the officials also said that the village offices did not have any consolidated/comprehensive record of government land. And the officials said that they were also finding it hard to trace encroachments and evict them for taking back the land for public purpose. With land becoming an issue for the major projects, the officials said that the government was for giving instructions to all the revenue offices to maintain a record of all available lands.
With land scarce in the state, the officials say that the government should give importance to maintaining the public lands so that it will not have any difficulty in identifying lands for any project or any other public purpose.