The Government is working out a comprehensive land-use policy for the State. The Revenue Department will soon release a draft in this regard for feedbacks from stakeholders and experts. According to department sources, the policy, when finalized, will set a broad out line for sustainable utilization of the State's divergent land resources, including paddy fields, forests, hill ranges, watersheds and coastal areas.
One of the major proposals is to declare non-river water reserves such as backwaters, freshwater lakes, ponds and marshy lands as protected areas. Encroachments, filling and sand-mining will be prohibited in such areas. Wetland information and management systems will be evolved for conservation and effective tapping of resources such as rivers, backwaters and other water bodies. In order to protect fast dwindling paddy fields in various agricultural zones in the state should be declared as 'paddy producing regions'. Conversion or filling of such areas should be totally banned, except for very unavoidable purposes like construction of own houses. Here also permission for filling should be given only for five cents of land, and that too only in the border areas of paddy fields. The draft policy suggests that sanction be given for other short-term crops and fish farming in paddy fields alternately. Only the government should have the power for filling paddy fields for public purposes and development activities. Clay mining will be strictly regulated I the paddy fields
(The Hindu,
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