Title deeds for farmers cultivating forestland

Belagavi: Agriculturists utilising land in forest areas for agriculture purposes for a long time will now be given record of rights by the state government. According to Minister for Small Scale Industries Satish Jarkiholi, the government will provide official land documents to such farmers within two weeks after holding a meeting with the Forest Department.

At a meeting of Forest Department on the issue of providing record of rights to forest dwellers in Belagavi, Mr Jarkiholi said, forest officials should help people to gather the required documents about their lands. All those struggling to get record of rights of their lands, which were being used for agriculture purposes, would be given soon, he added.

As per Centre’s forest policy, people from general, SC and SC categories using their land in forest areas should be given record of rights. A stringent government’s rule for such residents to provide many documents about their lands to obtain the record of rights had become a hurdle for them. To make things easier for such people, forest officials should help them get the records, said Mr Jarkiholi.

In Belagavi district, the department received 17,000 applications from people for record of rights of which only 1,000 had been cleared. It means most of applications awaited clearance for lack of some official documents which the applicants failed to produce. In the first phase, 205 applicants would be given three acres of land each shortly in Belagavi region. During the meeting, it was found that the Forest Department cleared only one application out of 843 submitted by people living in forest lands. The Forest Department has made it mandatory for all applicants to produce every document which has been sought by the government to get the record of rights.