For JNURM, Bengal ready to rethink land ceiling

The Left Front government in Bengal is sending out signals that it is willing to give some ground on policy in return for infrastructure dividends.

The Left Front government in Bengal is sending out signals that it is willing to give some ground on policy in return for infrastructure dividends. In what could be music to the Centre’s ears, the state government has set up a four-member committee to work on repealing the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act, mandatory for states to access funds under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM).

The committee, to be chaired by former secretary of Urban Poverty Alleviation SS Chakraborty, has been asked to review the Act and submit a report within three months.

‘‘The state government will look into the report and take a decision on how to go about repealing the Act. We have a time line of seven years (which is the duration of the JNURM project) to repeal the act,’’ state Urban Development Minister Ashok Bhattacharya said.

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Bhattacharya admitted that the Left Front government was ‘‘under pressure’’ from the Centre to repeal the Act. At stake for Bengal — the Rs 300-crore elevated roadway from Park Circus to Eastern Bypass in Kolkata, a Rs 90-crore drainage project in Howrah and the Vivekananda flyover among others.

‘‘These projects are stuck because the Centre is insisting that we repeal the (Urban Land Ceiling) Act. With the setting up of the committee, they would know that we are moving on the issue,’’ said Bhattacharya. The timing is just right. The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government meets the Centre on the JNURM later this month.

The 1976-vintage Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act — applicable only to three cities (Kolkata, Ansansol and Durgapur) — forbids holding of large tracts of land which, in turn, inhibits any big infrastructure project. As per this law, in Kolkata, holding of more than 7.5 acres is not allowed, in the other two smaller industrial towns, it is 20 acres.

‘‘Though we do feel that there should be some kind of social control over land in the urban areas, we are willing to look into the matter in-depth. We would, in likelihood, be able to move on it in the second or third year of the (JNNURM) scheme time-line,’’ Bhattacharya said.

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The Left Front has already lined up an impressive report card for the Centre on the urban reforms front — stamp duty is already down to among the lowest in the entire country, six per cent (of the property price) in the urban area and five per cent in the rural areas. Following the ‘‘good reform-minded behaviour’’ of the West Bengal government, the Centre has sanctioned six drinking water projects worth Rs 256 crore of the Kolkata metropolitan area.

That sanction, too, came after pressure from West Bengal and Maharashtra that drinking water and poverty alleviation related projects be kept out of the ambit of mandatory reforms for the JNURM.

Maharashtra, however, has not budged on repealing land ceiling. ‘‘We’ve pointed it out to the Centre that they are being given (JNNURM) funds, despite their refusal to repeal the Act,’’ Bhattacharya added as a footnote.