Paddy land conservation Act fails to hit mark
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, December 12 2022:
The state saw a ray of hope of protecting the shrinking agricultural land when the government enacted The Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetlands Act 2014 and subsequent amendment to the Act with the latest in 2020, which was put into force through promulgation of an ordinance.
However, after almost a decade of enacting the Act in 2014 and two years after the Biren government enforced a more stringent law through an ordinance, the Act is yet to serve the real purpose as structures, both residential and commercial, continue to crop up everywhere in the paddy lands of the state.
Even though eviction and demolition drives of such illegal structures are carried out once in a while, one can easily comprehend failure of the Act as no effective follow-up measures could be seen taken up to evict those structures not only occupying the agricultural land but also rendering nearby paddy fields useless for agricultural purpose.
Like any other places in the state, this situation of new structures invading the agri cultural land could be seen in Kanglatongbi area of Imphal West district where new houses could be seen standing tall in the middle of agricultural lands.
One Kaikhamang Daimai, son of Phenrang Dinang, is constructing houses in his two plots in Kanglatongbi area one measuring 2.025 acres and the other of 8.51 acre size.
Though latest amendment in the Act that came in to force in 2020 incorporated stricter provisions for penalising the owner of the land for such construction, the government authority has not been able to take up any actions against the construction.
Apart from residential houses, several commercial structures like brick field, vehicle repairing shops, educational institutions, football turfs, restaurants and shops are invading agricultural land in different parts of the valley area, where maximum of the state's agricultural lands are clustered.
In June this year, DC Imphal West issued a notification instructing owners to remove such constructions taken up without getting prior approval by setting deadline of 10 days and cautioning of forced eviction and penalty.
However, no follow up actions have been taken up even after six months.
Such failure to enforce the Act and take up stringent actions could be one of the reasons for indirectly encouraging many land owners to use their agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, which will ultimately affect the food production capacity of the state despite the efforts of agriculture department and allied departments and agencies to make the state self-reliant in food production.