Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Topic: Islanders seek withdrawal of Land Norms in Lakshadweep

Why in News?

• A series of regulations proposed by an administrator Praful Khoda Patel in a set of islands in the Arabian Sea has caused widespread resentment and fear among its residents.

Key Points

• The regulation empowers the government, identified as the administrator, to constitute Planning and Development Authorities (PDAs) to plan the development of any area identified as having “bad layout or obsolete development”.
• An authority thus created would be a corporate body with a government-appointed chairman, a town planning officer and three “expert” government nominees besides two local authority representatives.
• Section 72 of the draft Planning and Development Authority proposal allows the administration to evict a person from a property that “he is not entitled to occupy”.
• The draft in some cases says the maximum period allowed will be three years. That means an islander can make her house standing for only three years.
• The draft law denies protection granted to the Scheduled Tribes – the islands’ indigenous people – by the constitution and violates the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
• Apart from the above proposals, the draft also talked about ban on beef, and disqualification of people with more than two children who wish to contest the village council elections.

Issues

• Islanders have pointed out that the legislation are out of sync with the social and environmental realities of the archipelago.
• The creation of the Lakshadweep Development Authority (LDA), with extensive powers, including eviction of land owners, is widely read as having been pushed by the real estate lobby and against the interest of the islanders.
• The islanders opposing the plan have pointed out that the ecologically fragile islands are tiny and thickly populated. Therefore there is no scope or need for bigger roads.
• One of the petitions seeking the withdrawal of the regulation says the legislation vests extensive powers with the authority, allowing it to prepare comprehensive development plans for any area and relocate people.

About Lakshadweep

• Lakshadweep is an idyllic archipelago of 36 islands – 10 of them inhabited – spread over a 32-square-kilometre area in the sea, about 200 km off the southwestern coast of the Indian Peninsula.
• Residents in the smallest among India’s eight “Union Territories” (UTs), with a population of 65,000 people – 97 percent of them Muslims.