The Assam cabinet on Tuesday decided to repeal over 300 obsolete state acts. Among them, included the Assam Gramdan Act, 1961 and the Assam Bhoodan Act, 1965 that was initiated by social reformer Acharya Vinoba Bhave. The social reformer had walked across the country asking people to consider him as one of their sons and donate one-seventh of their land to him. He would later distribute it to the landless.
The Bhoodan Movement started in a Telangana village named Bhoodan Pochampally. From 1951 to 1964, Bhave walked across the whole nation for 13 years.
The Cabinet said it has decided to amend the Acts to counter unabated encroachment on over 10,897 bighas (more than 3,602 acres) of land. For this purpose, the Cabinet will introduce two sets of repeal bills during the forthcoming Autumn Session of the Assam Assembly that begins from September 12.
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What are the Acts?
The Assam Bhoodan Act, 1965
The Assam Bhoodan Act is an act to facilitate the donation and settlement of lands in connection with the Bhoodan movement. It applied to the whole state. Bhoodan meant voluntarily giving away a part of land to landless people. By ‘landless’, it meant ones whose main source of livelihood is agriculture, and whose documents did not hold any land or held an uneconomic holding of less than five bighas of land. Under the Act, the Assam Bhoodan board was established for the purpose.
Assam Gramdan Act, 1961
The Act provided for the establishment of gramdan village in pursuance of the Bhoodan Yojna movement. This too applied to the whole of Assam, except the autonomous districts under the sixth schedule of the Indian constitution.
Why is the Act being repealed?
The Assam government will repeal the Assam Gramdan Act, 1961, and the Assam Bhoodan Act, 1965, to enable optimum or judicious use of bhoodan lands after they are taken over by the government. The repeal would facilitate regularisation of bhoodan/gramdan lands by aggregating them into existing land banks.
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The Act also wants to settle indigenous occupants on bhoodan/gramdan lands as per the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (ALRR), 1886 and Land Policy, 2019, and allow the government to be the custodian of the land. It will also allow the government to take legal measures in case of unabated encroachment, land grabbing or illegal transfer of land.