Govt lures villagers who go for voluntary chakbandi with civic amenities

In a bid to address the problem of increasing urge for urbanisation in the hills of Uttarakhand, chief minister Harish Rawat has asked the chief

development officers (CDOs) to spread the message of voluntary Chakbandi (land consolidation) in their districts.
Pauri CDO Navneet Pandey has instructed all the block development officers and tehsildars to identify one village in each block where the villagers are ready to

adapt voluntary land consolidation programme.
Drinking water facility, road connectivity, schools, electricity and other development programmes would be provided in such villages as an incentive to lure more

people to take up land consolidation programmes.
Ganesh Garib, who had been pioneering the cause of land consolidation in the villages for the last 38 years, said that though the efforts of the chief minister are

welcome yet such exercises have already been held in the past where the people have shown their consent for land consolidation in the Gram Sabha meetings

but nothing tangible ever came out of such meetings.
People who owned more land in the villages have already migrated to the cities and those who are left in the villages have practically no land of their own or have

a very small piece of land so the concept of voluntary Chakbandi loses its meaning, Garib said.
He added a lot of fallow land is lying in abundance in the villages and the government would have to acquire it for its redistribution to those who are willing to

indulge in farming.
Garib said that Chakbandi day would be celebrated on March 1 at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and the new proposal of the government for voluntary Chakbandi would

be discussed there at length.