Hyderabad: The TS government has come out with a novel idea to purchase land for the landless poor in the state. The government has opened a portal seeking offers from private landowners who wish to sell their properties. The portal, http://lplds.cgg.gov.in, is designed and developed by the Centre for Good Governance for the TS SC Cooperative Development Corporation Limited. Landowners offering their lands for sale under the ‘Land Purchase Scheme” have to provide information like the district, village, name of pattadar, address, survey number, soil type, source of irrigation at the time of sale, rate offered by the pattadar, mandal, caste, contact number, extent in acres, whether it is being cultivated or fallow and the prevailing market price.
Once the offer is made by the landowner, officials of the department will visit the site and after conducting a detailed study of the prevailing market price in the area, quality of land etc., they will fix the price. Though the scheme is basically meant for purchase of land by the Corporation for the government’s “land purchase and distribution scheme”, a senior official said that if it clicked, it could be extended to other sectors, especially irrigation, industries and IT.
The Corporation, headed by V.V. Reddy, was set up in 2014 for taking up programmes for the economic development of SC families in the state, which include land purchase scheme wherein three acres of land is provided to poor SC families. The average cost of the land is around Rs 4.17 lakh per acre. Implementation of the scheme has been going on at a slow pace due to non-availability of suitable government land near the villages where the beneficiaries reside and private landowners are reluctant to sell their land to the government. Instead of adopting the age-old land acquisition system, the corporation decided to seek offers from landowners. So far, 315 landowners have opted to sell 4,035.35 acres of land in the state.
