Mayor hands over thika lease deeds

Kolkata: Handing over thika lease deeds to a few thika tenants on Friday, Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Firhad Hakim said that the civic body has so far, since the amendment of the West Bengal Thika Tenancy (Acquisition and Regulation Act), processed 16 applications while 40 more are under process.

The Mayor handed over the thika lease deeds to thika tenants of 48 Jainuddin Mistry Lane at Chetla. He said the lands are of smaller sizes, measuring 1.5 to 2 kottahs. The Mayor highlighted that so far, the civic body has processed 16 applications for executing lease deeds. He added that 40 more are under process while the mutation is pending for more than 5,000 such properties. Last month, the KMC had executed the first lease deed in favour of three thika tenants of wards 07.

Hakim said such a measure was taken in line with the KMC’s vision of eventually ridding the city of slums. Most slums in Kolkata are situated on thika lands which the government had acquired from zamindars post-Independence while allowing the tenants to continue to occupy such plots.

The 2019 amendment has allowed these tenants to become lessees, thus giving them the right to develop their homes on these lands. This also allowed them to secure bank loans to build houses on a small area of land; up to 3 cottahs. In Kolkata, there are about 2,000 acres of thika tenancy land.

As a first step towards making it easier for thika tenants to obtain no-objection certificates (NOC) against a sanction plan for building their homes, Hakim, who is also the Cabinet minister in charge of the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs (UDMA) department, ensured that control of thika lands was transferred to the UDMA from the Land and Land Reforms department.

Hakim said: “With the thika cell at KMC headquarters, we are confident that the number of illegal construction on thika lands will also come down. Since it was a hassle earlier for thika tenants in obtaining NOCs against sanction plans, illegal constructions were mushrooming on such lands. We expect that in the next few years, several of these thika tenants who live in slums on thika lands will be able to live in the comfort of their flats.”