BENGALURU: Amid growing concern over the issue of lack of land for graveyards in the state, the State Revenue Department has issued an ‘emergency’ direction to all deputy commissioners (DCs) to buy land from private entities and use them as graveyards.
The direction has been issued after the department received applications from villagers across the state seeking land for graveyards in their respective places.
In Karnataka, there are 29,438 villages in more than 6,000 Gram Panchayat limits. In January this year, Revenue Minister R Ashoka held a meeting with Deputy Commissioners and Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and various issues including lack of space for burial grounds in many villages were discussed.
During the meeting, it was pointed out that as many as 4,370 villages (close to 20 per cent of the total in Karnataka) do not have burial grounds.
The State government authorities had initiated steps to acquire land for the purpose and was expected to finalise it by March-end. Most of the affected villages are in north Karnataka and Malnad regions.
However, land could not be acquired for all villages. Officials from the revenue department said more than 1,000 villages do not have graveyards.
To get land, Under Secretary, Revenue Department (Land approval-I) has written a letter to all the DCs following directions from Principal Secretary (Revenue Department) asking them to acquire land from private parties in the villages that do not have government land.
A senior official from the department told TNIE that for public works, DCs are authorised to buy land by paying three times the guidance value.
“We have told officials to identify and buy land according to the population. We have been receiving letters from the villages concerned,” the official said.
For 1.3cr people in city only 132 burial grounds
“At some places which have no land, people are either taking the dead to neighbouring villages to bury or to cremate. We are trying to make the facilities available,’’ the official said.
In Bengaluru too, there is a shortage of burial grounds. With a population of 1.3 crore people, there are 132 burial grounds in the city which are full.
No new graveyard has come up in the last two decades despite the population increasing manifold.
Spread over 87 acres, Kalpalli cemetery at Kathalipalya in Sarvagnanagar is said to be largest Hindu graveyard in the state.
What other countries do?
Israel has multi-storeyed underground burial tunnels.
In Germany, same graves are reused every few years.
In Hong Kong, thousands of families store ashes in sacks at funeral homes.
Japan has high-tech cemetery, where the ashes of the deceased are stored.