The Rajkot District Panchayat has decided to hold an open to all standing committee executive meet for farmers and land holders to get their views on conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural land. The first such public meeting will be held on December 27 at Race Course in Rajkot,where as many as 160 applicants from 14 talukas in the district are expected to participate. The move has been initiated to curb rampant corruption in the whole process and ensure full transparency. Sources said the applicants are free to raise issues ranging from dos and donts of the conversion formalities to getting no-objection certificates from different government departments. They can even share their problems like bribing the local politician or some officer to get their work done. Given the fast growing real estate business in the region,there is no doubt that land deals are gold mine for corrupt individuals. There are a lot of formalities in the non-agricultural conversion process,for which you have to get no-objection certificates from at least nine departments. It is obvious that there is a lot of scope for corruption at each level. The public meetings will help in bringing down the corruption practices I feel, said Nagdan Chavda,standing committee chairman whose decision has spread cheer among applicants. He added that the applicants will no longer have to get NOCs from the gram panchayat,health officer,industry centre and the local office of National High Authority of India,which will save their time and money. Earlier,the committee had brought down the number of NOCs from 13 to nine. Now,they have to submit NOCs from mamlatdar office,taluka development officer,special land officer,deputy collector (land),PGVCL executive engineer,road and building department and irrigation department. Then the district panchayat president and development officer will finally sign the application, Chavda added.
