GUWAHATI, Dec 1 - In Assam, there is a need to revisit the existing land laws and make suitable changes to bring them in harmony with present-day realities.
This has been suggested in the recently published land policy prepared by the State Revenue and Disaster Management Department.
Pointing out land crisis in both rural and urban areas of Assam, the department, in the policy, pointed out five factors responsible for the problem.
These factors are � occurrence of flood every year rendering land unfit for cultivation due to siltation and erosion, rapidly growing urbanisation and industrialisation, unauthorised encroachment on government land, temptation to sell roadside agricultural land by the poor, ignorant and unorganised agriculturists to non-agriculturists, and degradation of land for a variety of man-made factors.
The policy, at the very outset states that in Assam, there is an urgent need to protect land rights of the indigenous people.
Meanwhile, in allotment of government land for ordinary cultivation in rural areas, the policy states that preference should be given to those indigenous land owner cultivators, who have been rendered landless due to flood, erosion, earthquake and other natural calamities, indigenous landless cultivators belonging to scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, other backward castes, minority and other backward class communities, indigenous widows having no earning sons or daughters (excluding married daughters) who intend to take up cultivation as a source of livelihood, and indigenous single women, differently-abled persons and ex-servicemen desirous and capable of taking up agriculture as a means of livelihood.
According to the policy, a person who has agricultural land to the extent of one bigha or less in his name or his family, either as tenant or as an owner anywhere in the State with no means of livelihood other than cultivation, will be regarded as a landless person for the purpose of entitlement to get settlement of land.
For this purpose, the person who does not have any land in his name or in the name of his family, either as tenant or as an owner and has no means of livelihood other than cultivation, will get preference.
But anybody having over three and a half bighas of land, taking into account both agricultural and homestead, shall ineligible for further settlement.