Bengal to have new urbanisation policy

State likely to retain land ceiling Act

With the auction route for land allocation unlikely to help realtors, facing acute land shortage for new development, the West Bengal government is set to bring out a new policy for land acquisition, meant specifically for land owned by private individuals or groups.

However, much to the disappointment of developers, the government was unlikely to dissolve the urban land ceiling Act, one of the key demands of realtors, said sources.

Thus, in its recommendation to a task force in charge of formulating a new urbanization policy for the state, the realtors have demanded waiver of urban land ceiling Act, in case of housing projects reserve 25 per cent of housing units for LIG.

Recently, the West Bengal government came out with a new land policy for government-owned land, under which land parcels will be allotted for commercial use through auction route, against the earlier mode of a tendering process. Under the policy, land for housing meant for (low income group) LIG, poor or economically weaker sections (EWS) have been kept be exempt from auction.

However, realtors are not particularly contented with the exemption.

While on one hand, government unlikely to unlock much of the land for real estate development due to the limited size of state land bank, on the other hand the auction pricing might increase land prices, say developers.

The government-owned land is not sufficient in amount to meet the demand for housing. So the new land policy is not much significance for developers. We are expecting a new urbanization policy to address the issue, and have alredy submitted our demands, said Santosh Rungta, a city-based realtor and former president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (Credai).

One of the biggest hurdles in developing new townships in West Bengal is the the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act (ULCA), 1976. According to the Act, the ceiling limit on vacant land in a category A city like Kolkata is 7.5 cottah or about 500 square meters. West Bengal is one of the few states in the country to have a legislation like the ULCA. The demand for repealing the ULCA was raised for the first time by Godrej Properties chairman Adi Godrej, at an industry meet within the first month of Banerjee taking over the chief ministers office.

The new land policy is not likely to solve the problems surrounding land issues in West Bengal. We are optimistic about the upcoming urbanization policy, said Pradeep Sureka, Managing Director of Sureka Group.

In November last year, during a summit on real estate sector in the state, Bengal Builds, real estate developers had vociferously demanded lenient laws and sops governing real estate development in the state. However, Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, had ruled out any concessions to the realtors due to the poor financial condition of the state. The chief minister had announced the formation of a task force to examine the hurdles for urban infrastructure development in Bengal, with the aim to formulate a new policy on urbanization.