SC/ST land scheme: Govt may pay 5x the guidance value

The BJP government is considering paying up to five times the guidance value to landowners under a scheme in which agricultural plots are purchased and given to poor Dalit and tribal families.

Such an incentive nudging people to sell their land has become necessary as the government is said to be finding it difficult to find plots that can be given to landless SC/ST families under the Land Purchase Scheme, which is one of the many programmes the Basavaraj Bommai administration is pushing to woo the SC/STs.

Under the Land Purchase Scheme, which has been in place since 1990, landless SC/ST agricultural labourers are given two acres of dry land or one acre of wetland purchased from non-SC/ST landholders within a 10-km radius of the beneficiary’s current residence. The land is registered in the name of a woman in the SC/ST family.

At present, deputy commissioners can offer landowners up to three times the guidance value as the cost of purchase for agricultural plots. Guidance value is the base price on which property transactions have to take place, and it runs into several lakhs per acre on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

“We are discussing increasing this to five times the guidance value. But no decision has been taken,” Social Welfare Minister Kota Srinivas Poojary told DH.

“For now, we are trying to make things work with the existing provision.”

The government has already hiked the unit cost from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. Of this, the government pays 50 per cent and the rest is a term loan. The government is considering hiking the unit cost from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 25 lakh in Bengaluru Urban, Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara and Chikkaballapur districts where land prices are high.

“The notion that paying more than the guidance value will fetch land is not true of all districts. For example, in Kalaburagi and Raichur, the existing payout will work. In the irrigated areas of Ramanagara and Mysuru, we need to pay more,” Poojary explained.

Since 2018, the Dr B R Ambedkar Development Corporation has spent over Rs 360 crore to purchase 4,158 acres under the Land Purchase Scheme.

Kollegal MLA N Mahesh, a former minister trying to get Dalits to support the BJP, said the government’s plan to offer more money to landowners will help at a time when not many people are coming forward to sell their land.

“The government should also increase the 10-km radius and make it 25 km,” he said.