Sweeping Changes In Land Ceiling Law On Anvil

This was stated by the minister of state for urban affairs and employment D Venkateshwarlu at a seminar on housing and real estate development here yesterday.

He said the government is opening dialogues with state governments for revamping the Land Acquisition Act and to make these state legislations complementary to the Union land legislations.

He said the government is also considering according ``industry status'' to the housing sector which in turn would facilitate availability of credit from financial institutions such as the IDBI and IFCI. Industry status for housing has been a long-standing demand of the sector.

The minister also reiterated that the Delhi Rent Control Act would be reviewed within a reasonable time frame. This legislation has been blocking built-in houses for rental purposes because of various complexities, he said.

Reflecting on the poor performance of the Land Ceiling Act, he said that the Act, which had targeted land acquisition of 22 lakh hectares on paper, had achieved acquisition of only 15,000 hectares by 1991-92, a negligible 6.75 per cent of projection. He said any more land acquisition could not be expected through the Act.

Besides amending the Act, the government also needs to provide incentive to private land owners to contribute towards the Shelter Fund, he stated.

Assocham in collaboration with the real estate developers also presented their recommendations to the government. The recommendations include the formation of NAREDCO, an association of various real estate developers with government participation to promote self-regulation.

It was also recommended that a public-private partnership should take up the task of providing houses to the country's 33 million homeless people.

To mobilise finances, it was recommended that provident funds and insurance companies should earmark a portion of their investible surpluses for the real estate sector.

Also, agencies should be nominated to carry out all merchant banking appraisals for the housing sector and an environment should be created so that securitisation can pick up and thereby facilitate housing finance institutions and banks to raise funds.

The minister said that these recommendations would be considered before any policy is formulated in the real estate and housing sector.