SRINAGAR: A day after the J&K government explained the rationale behind the amendments to the land laws that allow outsiders to buy land in the Union territory, seven-party amalgam People's Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) as well as the Congress on Tuesday rejected the same with PAGD calling it a “bizarre attempt to distort facts, weave lies and mislead people”.
Addressing a press conference on Monday, government spokesman Rohit Kansal had said that “old land laws system of J&K is essentially meant to serve a rural and agrarian economy” and that there was a need to clean the system and give a set of simple land laws to prevent unnecessary litigation and discretionary interpretation.
Kansal had also said that the old laws had become obsolete and, when looked at as a whole, suffered from redundancies.
Issuing a statement on Tuesday, PAGD termed J&K’s original land laws regime as most progressive, pro-people and pro-farmer in the entire Indian subcontinent.
“The real object of repeal of the basic land laws and massive amendments to the other laws is to push in and implement the agenda of effecting demographic change and disempowering the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” the statement read.
The laws now introduced through amendments are not only against people of J&K but are undemocratic, unconstitutional and backward-looking, it said.
Meanwhile, reacting to Kansal’s statement, J&K Pradesh Congress Committee president Ghulam Ahmad Mir questioned the official line that bulk of agriculture land will not be transferred to people from outside the Union territory and described it as an attempt to mislead the masses.
Rejecting the official statement, Mir said the new laws now allow land to be transferred to non-state subjects, depriving the people of J&K of their rights. The previous laws of the erstwhile J&K state gave full protection to people, which have now been abolished in an unconstitutional and undemocratic way, he added.