Kejriwal tours Delhi villages, discusses land pooling with farmers

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday evening toured several villages in outer Delhi and discussed the government's land pooling scheme with farmers.

"Land pooling will develop and urbanise Delhi's villages and it will bring lakhs of jobs and employment," Kejriwal told the farmers.

He visited Chhawla, Repla, Paprawat, Pandwala Kala, Kharkhari Jatmal and Kheda Dabar villages in outer Delhi's Najafgarh and Matiala to talk about the government's land pooling scheme with farmers.

"Minister Kailash Gahlot will work on the settlement of all problems of villagers and I'll supervise it myself," the Delhi Chief Minister told villagers.

Under the scheme, land owners in villages can pool their land and give it to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which would develop basic facilities like roads and drains, and return 48 to 60 per cent of the land to villagers.

Rest of the land would be used to build parks, roads, schools and other public facilities.

The returned land would then be used by owners only for building multi-storeyed flats, which would provide affordable housing to the people of Delhi.

The government expects around 20 to 25 lakh houses would be built under the scheme over the next 10 years, on around 40,000 acres of land.

Referring to Kailash Gahlot, Kejriwal said: "Now that your son has become a minister in the cabinet, it's like everyone in the villages of Delhi has become a minister."

Taking a dig at the Congress, the AAP chief said: "After 15 years of governance, Sheila Dikshit didn't even know that there were farmers in Delhi. But only three months after coming to power, we paid farmers the highest compensation in the country when their harvest got damaged."

--IANS

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