State to start survey in 35 colonies for giving land rights to residents
KOLKATA: With the successful completion of distribution of 1.25 lakh freehold title deeds in a record time of just one-and-a-half years, the Mamata Banerjee government will soon initiate a survey in 35 more refugee and non-refugee colonies to provide documents of land rights to its residents.
About 1.25 lakh freehold title deeds have been distributed among dwellers of at least 209 refugee colonies across the state. While carrying out the survey, preparation of documents and distribution of the deeds, the state Land and Land Reforms department have come across these 35 colonies where people need to be provided with freehold title deeds.
The department received the information about the refugee colonies from District Magistrates. These colonies are situated in districts, including North 24-Parganas, Howrah and areas in and around Kolkata.
Earlier, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had announced her government's decision of regularising all refugee colonies to give protection to the residents against forceful eviction. The freehold title deeds will help the dwellers of the refugee colonies for further development of their 'dwelling houses.' At the same time, they will have a document to claim the ownership of the plot. "It comes as a social security for the people residing in refugee colonies and they no longer have to worry about getting evicted," said a senior state government officer.
While addressing political rallies ahead of the Assembly polls, Banerjee had repeatedly said she would not allow NPR, NRC and CAA in Bengal citing the example of Assam that witnessed exclusion of the names of lakhs of Bengalis in the final draft of the NRC.
With the Chief Minister's announcement in the beginning of 2019-20 of taking up a major drive to provide land documents to this section of people, initially residents of as many as 94 refugee colonies had received the freehold title deeds.
On November 4 in 2020, Banerjee had announced about giving a total of 1.25 lakh freehold title deeds following the Cabinet decision of regularising all refugee colonies and more than 115 colonies were added in the list. The officer said the government's endeavour is to complete the task of handing over land right deeds to residents of another 35 colonies at the earliest. But it would take a few months to complete the process followed by a detailed survey to assess the area of the plots of each resident.
