Following concern expressed by a few legislators, the State government on Wednesday announced that it would modify the Karnataka Land Grabbing Prohibition (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which seeks to keep farmers out of the ambit of stringent norms related to land-grabbing.
Announcing this, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said the modified Bill would be brought before the Assembly on Thursday for consideration.
The Bill had sought to amend the Karnataka Land Grabbing Prohibition Act, 2011, to avoid criminal proceedings against farmers who have encroached the government land in rural areas by excluding all the places from the purview of this Act except the places within the limits of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and the city corporations.
While most of the legislators cutting across party affiliations welcomed the Bill, a few legislators, including A.T. Ramaswamy (JD-S) observed that in the name of protecting farmers, the proposed legislation would provide the green signal to land-grabbers to go ahead with grabbing government land.
Taking serious exception to keeping even the city and town municipalities and town panchayats out of the ambit of the proposed legislation, he pointed out that land sharks were now looking at these urban areas as there was not much government land left in BBMP and corporation limits.
He argued that there was no need to bring the Bill if the intention of the government was to protect only farmers as there were various other provisions to protect them. He expressed fear that the Bill would open the flood gates for land sharks to grab government land in other urban areas.
Responding to this, Mr. Bommai admitted that there was a need to modify the Bill. He assured the House that the definition of government land would be included in the Bill providing for classifying city corporations, city and town municipal and town panchayat areas by mentioning the radius of their jurisdiction.
He said the modified Bill would be brought before the legislature on Thursday.
Explaining the need for protecting farmers, he pointed out that thousands of farmers were being made to come all the way from their places to Bengaluru under the provisions of the Act as the special court dealing with land-grabbing cases was located only in Bengaluru.
