V.4.1 The distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural land should be abolished. Land should be defined in a simple dictionary manner so that no one has the opportunity or option to wriggle out of the ceiling provisions by showing some as agricultural and some in other ways.

V.4.2 the ceiling would be on this generic definition of land not on any specific classification of land.

V.4.3 The general exemption that has been given for plantation, orchard, mango/litchi groves, fisheries and other special categories of land-use should be done away with.

V.4.4 As already provided for in section-4 of the Ceiling Act, the ceiling for a family of 5 or more should be 15 standard acres. If the family had any plantation, orchard, etc, it has to make a choice, whether it would keep them up to 15 acres or have paddy/wheatland for 15 acres. The choice will be theirs.

V.4.5 Mutts, religious establishments including temples, Church etc, which have been existing since 1950 would be allowed one unit of 15 acres. A temple having numerous deities will also have only one ceiling as one religious entity. A temple will be considered as a single unit and if there was a cluster of temples within the same campus or on contiguous campus they would also come under the single unit.

V.4.6 Sugar mills were given concession of 100 acres of land at the time of their establishment. The whole theory of a manufacturing unit having backward linkages with primary production has become obsolete. Therefore, lands held by the sugar mills, other than directly required by them for the purpose of sugar, viz., factory labour and officers’ quarters, hospitals, godowns, parking space for transport, etc., should be taken over by the government. They may have one unit of 15 acres other than the lands directly under use for production purposes.

V.4.7 For research organisations, Agricultural Universities/Colleges, and similar types of institutions including proposed industrial and commercial units, in future the government would have the power to allow more than one unit of ceiling to fulfil strictly the objectives for which these institutions/organisations would be set up. It has to be done in a customised case-to-case basis. The organisation/entity will enter into an actionable agreement with the government that in case they fail to fulfil the utilisation of land as agreed upon such lands will be resumed by the government.

V.4.8 The Bihar Land Reforms Act was enacted in 1950. Before that, on 19th July 1949 the Land Reforms Committee of the All India Congress Committee (Kumarappa Committee), recommended abolition of zamindari, and implementation of drastic ceiling laws. Thus from that day onwards, the landowners of Bihar had warning regarding the imposition of ceiling on landholding. A Ceiling Bill was introduced in 1955, which could not be enacted. The Ceiling Law was enacted in 1961. The amended law of 1961 was given effect on the 9th day of September 1970. Thus the landowners here had clearly time of two decades to manipulate, create false documents, to disperse their potential ceiling lands through carious means. Therefore, the cut off date of 22nd day of October 1959 ...has no logical validity. It is better not to give a date...But if any date has to be given, it should be 9th July 1949, the day on which the Kumarappa Commission submitted its report.

...V.4.12 The Ceiling Law should provide for criminal action against the landowners, for failure to furnish correct declaration of their ceiling surplus land. Criminal action should include adequate penal provisions.
V.4.13 Similarly, a penal clause should be inserted in the Land Ceiling Law against the officers who willingly and intentionally help the landowners to evade ceiling.

V.4.14 Land Tribunals or Fast Track Courts may be set up under Article 323 B of the Constitution for expeditious disposal of appeal cases. Since Fast Track Courts will be set up for the ceiling cases, jurisdiction of Civil Courts should be barred in respect of all ceiling matters.

V.4.15 Absentee landlords and/or non-resident landlords, who could be allotted one unit of ceiling, should be asked to give their option, whether they would like to utilise this land through personal cultivation, or would like the government to resume the same. They may be given three years time to decide.

V.4.16 the land once declared surplus, and in case no appeal is filed within the prescribed time limit, should immediately be settled to the appropriate persons, after the expiry of time limit.

V.4.17 The Sub-divisional officers will be directly responsible to ensure that parcha holders get physical possession of land, along with the assignment of parchas to them. Any case of a person having valid parcha and not having physical possession of the land indicated in the parcha, would attract disciplinary action against the concerned officer for negligence, incompetence and connivance with old landowners and/or land mafia. Sub-divisional officers will also be held responsible if old parcha holders are not given possession of the land given in the parcha.

V.4.18 The distribution of all Ceiling Surplus land should invariably be made in the name of husband and wife in joint ownership basis to ensure gender equality. On the basis of the same principle, revenue officials should seek out women headed households to assign parchas in the name of women.

V.4.19 There are many existing mills, factories, institutions, organisations who have in their ownership and possession huge areas of land. The Government should have the right to examine whether these institutions have properly utilised the land for which they acquired them. Thereafter, taking into account their firm and committed expansion programme in the near future, the Government would have right to resume any excess land and/or give them permission to have more land necessary for running the unit. This principle could apply, mutatis mutandis, to any new unit in future.

V.4.20 Immediate task of the State should be to allot between 1 (one) acre and 0.66 acre of Ceiling Surplus land to the lowest quintile of landless agricultural workers consisting of 16.88 lakh households each and assignment and assignment of at least 10 decimals of land to shelter-less households of 5.84 lakh non-farm rural workers each who are in the state of semi-bondedness as they live on the land of other landowners. These two measures would help in ushering in a significant social and economic transformation of rural Bihar.

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Nitish Govt.’s Vacillation on Land reforms

Nitish is trying to find ways to claim political credit for land reform amongst the rural poor while protecting the interests of his Government’s core constituency of feudal landlords. Naturally, he is seeking to dilute and delay the Bandyopadhyay recommendations till the next Assembly elections. He has appointed a 3-member Committee headed by the principal Secretary of the Revenue Department to review the recommendations.

He has undertaken some superficial measures to redistribute Bhoodan land and Khasmahal land. Homestead land for the rural poor households, the bulk of whom are dalits and mahadalits (for whom Nitish expresses such concern), is an acute problem in Bihar. For the last 2 decades there have existed Central government schemes of 4 decimals of land for the landless and homeless. In fact since 1948 Bihar has had a law providing for homestead pattas for landless labourers who have homes on landlords’ land. But no Government, including Nitish’s, has shown any interest in implementation. Now, after the Land Reforms Commission has recommended 10 decimals land Nitish has said in the Assembly that he will consider allotting 3 decimals. The Bandyopadhyay Commission has recommended a new sharecroppers’ law, and fresh ceiling laws with a ceiling of 15 acres. This is quite generous and liberal by all standards. Yet even this has proved too much for Nitish and his pro-feudal Government to contemplate.

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Land Struggle Lands Orissa CPI(ML) Leader in Jail

Comrade Tirupati Gamango, a prominent adivasi leader and member of the Standing Committee of CPI(ML)’s Orissa State unit has been sentenced to two years in jail and fined one thousand rupees in connection with a case involving land struggle movement in Rayagada district of Orissa. Comrade Gamango has already spent 8 months in jail previously in this case only. AIALA is engaged in land struggle movements in Rayagada district, and it is to demoralise the struggles that Comrade Gamango has been targeted. Comrade Gamango is out on bail as of now and an appeal has been filed in the upper court against this verdict.

On 16th July, 2009, the Kalahandi district committee launched a powerful tribal’s movement at Kalahandi on the issue of land rights of the tribal people. It began with a daylong protest with roads being blockaded for twelve hours. The blockade was lifted when the tehsildar accompanied with the Police came and fixed a date for open discussion with CPI(ML) leaders and activists for settling the land issues in this Block.

Some Ongoing Land and Anti-Feudal Struggles in Bihar

Land struggles are ongoing in Barachatti and Manpur blocks of Gaya district. In Barachatti, there was a dispute between the Bhoodan Yagya Committee and Forest department over 700 acres of land. The saplings planted by the Forest department had dried up and the Bhoodan Yagya Committee had distributed pattas to several. But no one had come to claim the pattas due to fear of the Forest Department and police. The party organised a mass meeting among local villagers and mobilised them to plant red flags and claim their land last August. Defying all sorts of machinations to divide villagers, as well as intimidate them, the rural poor (most of them from ‘mahadalit’ families) led by CPI(ML) have erected over 150 huts on the land. Now a struggle for water and pukka housing continues. In Manpur block, rural poor, most of them from Mushahar, Pasi and Pasmanda Muslim families, have occupied 29 acres and 45 decimals of government land, which had been wrongfully settled in the name of landlords Suresh Singh and Ranvijay Singh. Cases were lodged against more than 100 comrades, including the AIALA activist Shabana who is leading the movement. The police and entire administrative machinery tried and failed to evict the poor families. On 13 July determined protestors demonstrated at the district HQ demanding withdrawal of the cases, pukka housing and water facilities.

In Dhobibhigha village of Arwal, agricultural labourers had refused to sow the paddy seedlings on the fields of feudal BJP supporter Piyush Sharma. This boycott was in protest against his role in preventing them from casting their vote in the last Lok Sabha elections and also to demand higher wages. Piyush Sharma raised the bogey of ‘extremism’ and called in the police. On 10 July, the entire might of the police and local administration descended on the village – including many dozens of police personnel, inspectors, DSP and top officials. The Nitish Govt. might swear by the welfare of ‘dalits’ and ‘mahadalits’ – but its repressive and coercive machinery was there in full panoply to enforce feudal order! They were there to round up men and women like cattle to force them to sow the paddy seedlings. The SHO of the Chauram PS himself forcibly entered hutments and dragged men and women to work on Piyush Sharma’s fields. In protest against this feudal-style forced labour, however, labourers uprooted the paddy seedlings as soon as police had left. Feudal violence was unleashed on the poor but the struggle continues. Ceiling surplus land has been identified in this area and preparations are on to launch a movement to claim this land for the poor.

In Mohanpur village in Jhanjharpur, Madhubani district, a movement of Mushahar people is on to challenge the illegal occupation of land by landlords. The latter had tried to use NREGA for tree-plantation on this land. This ploy was exposed and a vigorous struggle is ongoing.

Similar struggles are on in other parts of Bihar as well.

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Mass Movement Demanding Implementation of Land Reform Recommendations

Rural poor, agricultural labourers and poor peasants from all over Bihar marched to Patna on 14 July to protest against the Nitish Government’s reluctance to implement the recommendations of the Land reforms Commission. Marching from Gandhi Maidan to the CM’s residence at R-Block, they raised slogans, “Why the Delay and Dilution in Implementing Land Reform Recommendations? The CM Must Answer!”; “Enact New Land Ceiling and Sharecropping Laws!”; “Stern Punishment for Land-Thieves!” and “Distribute 10 Decimals Homestead Land to all Poor Households!” They protested against the Nitish Government’s ploy to allot a mere 3 decimals of homestead land to rural poor instead of the 10 decimals recommended by the Bandopadhyay Commission. They also demanded that Bihar be declared a drought-affected state and massive drought-relief measures be undertaken immediately.

The rally was led by comrades Nand Kishore Prasad (CPIML State Secretary), AIALA National President Rameshwar Prasad, CCM KD Yadav, AIALA General Secretary Dhirendra Jha, AIKSS Convenor Rajaram Singh, AIPWA National Vice-President Saroj Chaubey, AIPWA State Secretary Shashi Yadav and AIALA State President Satyadev Ram. The rally culminated in a huge mass meeting presided over by Comrade Pawan Sharma, Vice President of AIALA. This militant mass gathering was addressed by Party General Secretary Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, who called for a sustained and militant campaign to call the Nitish Government’s bluff and expose its pro-dalit, pro-poor pretensions by challenging it to implement the recommendations of the Bandyopadhyay Commission.

As part of the campaign launched at the rally, protests were held at district HQs all over the state, including Patna, demanding implementation of the land reform recommendations.