Setting the tone for poll preparations, the UPA has begun drafting a “right to land” for the landless, on the lines of the right to work, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the right to food, by working with state governments to avoid confrontation as land is a state subject.
The government will also move the Cabinet to hike financial assistance for the landless to `20,000 to enable them to buy one-tenth of an acre of land. This will be in addition to a hike in Indira Awas Yojna grants.
The government is likely to prepare a draft Right to Land Bill in six months. The National Advisory Council, headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, will be part of the move to given legal entitlement of land to the landless. No nation in the world has such a law, though the International Human Rights Commission is learnt to have drafted such a proposal.
“The government has agreed to enact legislation giving the landless a right to land,” said land rights activist P.V. Rajgopal after the first meeting of the land reforms task force that was also attended by ministers Jairam Ramesh and Kishore Chandra Deo.
When asked how viable such a right to land would be, Mr Ramesh said: “It is viable, hence we are working on it. It will be brought as a step towards social security of the landless so that states too become part of the move”.