Haryana to develop ‘sustainable land use plan’ for Rs 49.50 lakh

In an attempt to prepare a sustainable land use plan of all the districts across the state,the Haryana government has launched a project to prepare a land use plan. The project will be implemented by the Haryana Space Applications Centre (HARSAC),a nodal agency of the Department of Science and Technology,in a phased manner. Threeee districts of Sirsa,Fatehabad and Hisar have been taken up in the first phase to finalise the methodology.

“The project named as Development of Sustainable Land Use Plan for Haryana involves an investment of Rs 49.50 lakh. Land use plans of all the districts of the state will be made on 1:50,000 scale. The Latest Indian Remote Sensing Satellite data will be used for the purpose. Land Use Plan of these three districts will be presented before the Natural Resource Group consisting of senior-level scientists from various universities and institutions like Indian Council of Agricultural Research,CCS Haryana Agricultural University,Hisar,and Central Soil Salinity Research Institute,Karnal. The other districts will be brought under the plan on the same pattern,” said Dheera Khandelwal,Principal Secretary,Science and Technology,Haryana.

“The decreasing availability of land with the increasing population has brought land management in focus in recent times. Preparation of the plan will involve identification of double-cropped area,land for horticulture,floriculture,vegetable growing,forestry,agroforestry and silvipasture,besides areas suitable for urban,industrial,institutional and infrastructural development. Reformatting and updation of various thematic maps like soil maps,ground-water quality and depth maps,present land use or land cover maps,wasteland maps,cropping pattern and crop rotation maps was being done for different districts.

All these digital maps will be integrated in the geographic information system (GIS) to prepare the land-use plan. Work on delineating special agriculture zones using meteorological data and thematic information has been initiated. Socio-economic data will also be collected and integrated in developing suitable land-use plan of different areas,” Khandelwal added.