Rajnath Singh approves new Defence Estates Circle in Uttarakhand

NEW DELHI: Uttarakhand is to get a new Defence Estates Circle soon, the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday approved the proposal. Because of the difficulties faced in managing large tracts of defence land in the state and the demand of residents of cantonments located there, in a significant move, the defence ministry will establish an independent office of Defence Estates at Dehradun and a sub-office at Ranikhet, the minister's office officially announced.

However, the govt is yet to confirm the timeline.

The new Defence Estates Circle at Dehradun will facilitate the residents or organisations to get timely and quick access to various services of defence land management.

To decentralize the governance structure, Singh also approved the establishment of a sub-office at Ranikhet under the administrative jurisdiction of the estates to deal exclusively with six districts of the Kumaon region.

"Earlier the entire defence land and cantonments in the state were covered under two distinct circles, headquartered at Meerut and Bareilly of Uttar Pradesh — distantly located posed various functional problems by causing delays and difficulties to cantonment residents there in getting timely and prompt redressal of their grievances, apart from the managing of defence lands located in far and remote areas in the state.

The Armed Forces also faced problems in land acquisitions, survey and demarcation of defence land and handling of litigation matters," an official statement further stated.

The new Defence Estates Circle is considered a significant step forward in bringing the government closer to the people in keeping with the objective of 'ease of living' and 'ease of doing business', the minister's office claimed.

Moreover, in the past couple of months, the concerned authority has also conducted several surveys on the Defence Estates Circle across many parts of the country.