PANAJI
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has announced that his government will pass a legislation which will bring restrictions on the transfer of ownership of agricultural land in the upcoming budget session of the Goa Legislative Assembly slated to begin from Monday.
Sawant made the announcement in a tweet from his official handle late on Saturday evening.
"In a major Cabinet decision our Government has approved the draft ‘The Goa Restriction on Transfer of Agricultural Land Bill, 2023’," the tweet by the Chief Minister said.
In another tweet, he said: "The Bill seeks to impose restrictions on the transfer of agricultural lands in the State of Goa to preserve and protect the land which is presently being used for cultivation of paddy."
This bill will be passed in the upcoming Assembly session he said.
Conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes has been a controversial subject in Goa's political narrative for decades.
Large-scale diversion for industrial or other more lucrative commercial uses including housings and real estate has mostly been promoted by several successive governments since the early 1990s, despite a ban on conversion already inherent in existing land laws.
Land-filling of low-lying agricultural fields, clandestinely backed by politicians and a corrupt bureaucracy has often been blamed by greens for the drastic decline of agriculture, particularly paddy cultivation, over the years.
Sawant, however, has not specified the nature of the restrictions the new law seeks to impose on transfer of land or how it will complement the existing laws which ban change in land use of agricultural land.
The bill is reportedly drafted by the Revenue department.
According to data, there are around 35,000 to 40,000 hectares of agricultural land in the State of which a part is taken up for cultivation and around 10,000 hectares is fallow.
