NEW DELHI: Highlighting the alleged poor infrastructure of the villages in the capital, Palam Khap chief Surender Solanki on Monday said the leaders of rural areas met and decided to soon hold a Mahapanchayat of the city’s 360 villages over the “sorry state of affairs.”
“We will draw a strategy to start a movement to push for the long pending demands of the city’s villages,” Solanki told reporters. The Khap leader threatened to boycott the upcoming elections in Delhi if their demands were not met within a stipulated period.
The Khap leader informed that people of different villages in Delhi are sitting in protest with their demand for the government to implement the master plan 2041. “It has been almost 17 years, and the master plan has not come in place, while no date has been announced, which is extremely unfortunate,” Solanki said.
“They [Government] must resolve the long pending issues of the villages and also set a deadline for completion of the works. Long assurances have been given for resolving the issues of the rural belt, but things are not taking place on the ground,” Solanki claimed.
LAND POOLING
Villagers have been questioning the delay in implementing two crucial land reforms—the land pooling policy and the Green Development Area (GDA) policy—that would have benefited them and also unlocked hectares of land parcels for the planned development of Delhi.
The land pooling policy, which would be implemented in 100 plus villages, will help unlock 20,000 hectares of land parcels on the outskirts of Delhi — paving the way for constructing over 17 lakh dwelling units to meet the city’s increasing housing demand.
The GDA policy, on the other hand, will be implemented in 70 plus villages — paving the way for regulated, planned development in peripheral and low-density development area villages (mostly where farmhouses have come up).
Both the land pooling policy—first notified during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s tenure in 2013 and later by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2018—and the GDA policy, which was placed in the public domain in 2021, are pending before the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
UNDER DEVELOPMENT
Delhi has more than 360 under-developed villages which have received “cursory attention” compared to urban areas.
According to locals, they are confined in cramped and unhealthy pockets by the Lal Dora (Red Line) which has reduced them to living in inhuman conditions lacking in basic civic services such as water, power, healthcare and good education. Even more alarming is that these villages are not under any ward or rural panchayat, which leaves the fate of the villagers in a pitiful state.
The Delhi government on August 23, instructed the officers concerned to expedite the ongoing development work in the city’s villages, stressing the importance of adhering to the set timeframe.
Development Minister Gopal Rai assessed the progress of the work and asked the officers to present detailed reports of all the schemes approved by the Delhi Gram Vikas Board during the next meeting on September 10. He had said the government had allocated Rs 900 crore for development work in Delhi’s villages.