What is Land Pooling?
We are familiar with carpooling but land pooling is somewhat not so familiar with us. It is an emerging new concept in the areas of Urban Housing Planning. Basically, it means that owners of the land join together and pooling in their plots of land for eventually handing over to the land pooling agency.
The designated Land Pooling agency is the respective states/cities eg. DDA(Delhi Development Authority), KMDA(Kolkata Municipal Development Authority and many more than take over for developing and construction of essential infrastructure like roads, sewage, water supply, metro corridors etc. after the development process is completed the Land Pooling Agency will reallocate the land among the original owners who had pooled then handed over to the agency after deducting a portion of the land as developmental cost. This position of the land with the agency will be under the control of the land pooling agency and will become a part of the master plan of the city.
Why is Land pooling important?
Most of the cities in our country have been experiencing an influx of population at a rapid rate. The available is not sufficient for building affordable homes. In semi-urban areas adjacent to the cities farmland is difficult to acquire by the developers, as the farmers are not motivated to sell their lands to them. There may also be some problem of land being acquired without the owner consent. To address these issues and also to encourage landowners into selling their land, the Land Pooling Agency will play an important role. The success of this policy will address the shortage of affordable homes and also benefit the economically weaker section of the society. The developers which are entrusted with the construction of houses on the land given by Land Pooling Agency have to earmark 15% dwelling spaces to economically weaker section.
Current Status
In the present scenario, some states notably Delhi took a leading part in propagating the concept of Land Pooling Policy. Recently the Ministry of Urban Development has approved the Delhi Government Land Pooling Policy. Despite this fact, the Land Pooling Policy is yet to take off. Delhi Government is yet struggling to frame Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Many parties are engaged in selling properties to hapless customers in the name of Land Pooling Policy. Before any developmental work can be done on the acquired lands, the government must first convert the land use from rural to urban areas. After this conversion takes place, only then the Land Pooling Agency can intervene and convert into these developmental areas finally handing over to the developmental entity for building houses.
A beginning has been made in the direction of providing houses within affordable means particularly to the economically weaker section of society and also providing an opportunity to build and acquire more houses within the limited resource of availability of land. Thus, when after getting the nod from the Ministry of Urban Development other procedural formalities are completed by the concerned agency, Land Pooling Policy will certainly ease the acute shortage of affordable homes in urban cities and also take care of the needs of the economically weaker section of the society.
