By IANS,
Panaji : In a bid to end “acrimony” between landlords and tenants “once and for all”, the Goa Law Commission has come out with various recommendations including setting up a housing fund to enable tenants and mundkar’s (homestead tenants) to buy their houses outright from landlords, commission chairman Ramakant Khalap said.
Khalap told IANS Wednesday that if the recommendation is accepted by the government, it would end a long history of traditional acrimony and hatred between landlords and tenants, which has resulted in overloading the lower judiciary and lower revenue courts with thousands of litigations, which drag on for years.
“Let this acrimony end, both for tenants, mundkars and landlords, once and for all. Let everyone come out smiling,” Khalap, a former union minister of state for law, said.
Describing the traditional mundkar as the last vestiges of feudalism in the state, Khalap said that the sooner it was done away with, the better it would be for Goa’s social fabric.
The recommendations which have been sent to the state government also suggest the setting up of a housing fund, from which mundkars and tenants can source low interest loans, with which they can purchase the contested property from the landlord outright.
“It may not be easy but it’s a start. We have also incorporated a sunset clause in our recommendation, where all mundkars and tenants should file their claims as beneficiaries by Dec 19, 2011,” he said.
To ensure that the landlord also gets his due share, Khalap said that the mundkars and other tenants should be given three months from the time of ownership of the land to either pay the landlord outright or avail the cheap government loans to purchase the property.