By IANS,
Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Monday constituted a two-member experts committee to formulate a new land policy in the state.
“We are forming a committee for making a new land policy in West Bengal because there is lot of confusion regarding the current policy,” Mamata Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat here.
“We don’t have any policy of acquiring land by terrorising and threatening common people. After we were voted to power, our decision was to form a new land policy,” said Banerjee.
“We have already given the order to form a land bank in the state,” she added.
“There are a number of departments with a lot of unutilised land with them. We have directed them to give details on it which will be collated to create a land bank,” the chief minister said.
The committee includes Debabrata Bandopadhaya, one of the architects of the much famed “Operation Barga”, under which lakhs of acres of land were distributed among landless farmers and tillers, and Soumendranath Bose, renowned lawyer.
“They will give recommendations and suggestions after looking into various aspects from the legal part to the interest of each person associated with the land. Their report will be the basis for the new land policy,” Banerjee said.
Land acquisition has been a bone of contention for the past five years in the state after the Left Front government tried to acquire land for industrialisation by invoking the Land Acquisition Law of 1894.
The controversy grew into a major political confrontation between the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress, which resulted in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) losing considerable support among farmers.