"The draft farmland policy clearly states that there should be no industrialisation on agriculture land in Uttarakhand," confirmed Agriculture Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.
However, the draft policy would shortly be sent to Chief Minister BC Khanduri before it is put before the state Cabinet for final approval.
"The final decision regarding the use of agriculture land for industrialisation has to be taken by the state Cabinet," said Rawat, who recently hogged limelight by opposing the government's move to give 55 acres of agriculture land to Tata Motors for the housing purpose.
Rawat has proposed that the farmland should not be used for industrialisation and instead the government should utilise non-agriculture and non-cultivated agriculture land for this purpose.
Rawat said nearly 312,000 hectare of non-agriculture and 383,000 of non-cultivated agriculture land is available in the hill state.
But he said the policy has been redrafted and now would go to the finance ministry and the chief minister before being sent to the state Cabinet for final approval.
Last year, a committee comprising agriculture scientists mainly from Pantnagar Agriculture University had finalised the new agri-draft, which clearly states that there should be no industrialisation and development of SEZ projects on agriculture land as a large chunk of farmland have fallen into the hands of land builders and industrialists in Uttarakhand during the past few years.
But later, the policy was redrafted to carry out certain amendments on the instructions of the chief minister as well as Rawat.
The main highlight of the new policy is that the government would now develop Special Agriculture Zones (SAZs) to protect the fertile land.
"We want to protect our agriculture for which we want to bring SAZ in Uttarakhand," said Rawat.
But official sources said the idea of SAZ was not being mooted to replace the much contentious SEZs, an issue that created big problem in states like Goa, West Bengal and Orissa.
The state government is also interested in providing interest-free loans to farmers instead of subsidy.
"Subsidy foments corruption. We want to give interest-free loans to farmers to curb corruption," said Rawat.
Significantly, there will be special focus on hill farming for small farmers also.
Special sops like electricity, water supply and seeds on cheap rates would be provided to the farmers. Additionally, toll-free call centres for farmers would also be set up in various parts of the state.
There had been an alarming rise in agriculture land being given for industrial and SEZ purposes the latest figures showed that the land-use pattern of nearly 24,000 hectares of farmland has been changed during the past seven years at the rate of 2 per cent.
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