Fight for land

From stricter land laws to revising domicile rules, Uttarakhand residents demand government action to stop the sale of agricultural land to outsiders

- VARSHA SINGH DEHRADUN

ON DECEMBER 24, 2023, thousands of people gathered in Uttarakhand’s winter capital, Dehradun, to pressurise the government to enact strict land laws, aiming to halt the large-scale sale of agricultural land to individuals from other states. The protestors, organised under the banner Mool Niwas Bhu Kanoon Samanway Sangharsh Committee, assert that since the state’s formation in 2000, governments have relaxed rules to attract outside investment. According to them, this approach has deprived Uttarakhand residents of their land, culture and identity.

In the days following the protests, Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami imposed an interim ban on the purchase of new agricultural land by outsiders and is now awaiting the report of an ongoing Law Land Committee to determine further steps.

Chandrashekhar Kargeti, a lawyer with the Uttarakhand High Court in Nainital, points out that Uttarakhand is the only Himalayan state that allows the sale of agricultural land to outsiders. This poses a significant problem, given that only 14 per cent of the state’s geographical area is designated as agricultural land, Kargeti says. “The land records for the region were last updated in the 1960s. Since then, extensive agricultural land has been repurposed for nonagricultural activities such as road construction and industries. The state government does not even have the details on the extent of agricultural land lost over the past 60 years,” says Dehradun-based historian Shekhar Pathak.