The mahapanchayat, which will be held at Mahipalpur on Sunday would largely talk about how the existing laws, including the Delhi Land Reforms Act, give absolute power to the government to acquire farming land in both rural and urbanized villages.
Delhi Gramin Samaj president Ravi Dutt claimed they have already covered several villages to create awareness about the issue. "We are on the verge of losing everything. Delhi has got peculiar problems as far as issues related to land acquisition are concerned. We want to take a united decision to urge government what it should do to protect the interest of those on whose land Delhi has come up,” he added.
Experts dealing with the land acquisition issue said as per Section 81 of the Delhi Land Reforms Act, if a piece of land in a village lies vacant for long and is not being used for farming, the revenue department has the right to convert it into wasteland.
"Almost 2,500 such cases have been reported in Mehrauli. The law also has provision that a farmer who has less than eight acre of land can only sell the entire land and not a portion of it (Section 33). Farmers’ hands are tied. These laws must change,” pointed out Col Devinder Shehrawat, general secretary of Delhi Gramin Samaj.
Farmers said land acquisition in Delhi happened in early 50s for developing government colonies such as RK Puram and Munirka. The next spell of land acquisition was for private development. Then, during the third phase land acquisition happened for developing residential areas like Dwarka.
"But what shocks people is that whose land was bought for only Rs 200-300 per sq yard, now they are being asked to pay Rs 18,000 per sq yard as development charge. Is it not injustice,” asked Shehrawat.