PM IAS DEC 24 NEWS ANALYSIS

Parliamentary Sessions

In News

• The Winter Session of Parliament was adjourned sine die recently, six days ahead of schedule.

More about the news

• Productivity of the Parliament:
  • Starting December 7, 2022, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha registered productivity of about 97 per cent and 103 per cent, respectively, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.
  • This is the eighth consecutive session since the 2020 Budget Session that a session was curtailed.
• Bills of this session:
  • Lok Sabha passed seven Bills and Rajya Sabha cleared nine Bills.
    • Altogether, both houses passed nine Bills, as two Bills were passed by Lok Sabha in an earlier session. 
    • Among the important Bills that were passed include
      • The Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Bill and 
      • The Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill. 
      • Bills to include certain communities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the Scheduled Tribes list were also passed.
• Bills that could not make it to the House:
  • None of the major Bills like the Trade Marks (Amendment) Bill and The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) (Amendment) Bill, 2022 made it to Parliament this time.
• Overall performance of the session:
  • The winter session had a relatively smooth run compared to the previous few sessions when extreme acrimony between the Opposition and the Treasury benches was observed. 
  • This time, the Opposition parties largely stuck to walkouts, responding to the government turning down their demands.

More about the Sessions of Parliament

• Parliament of India: 
  • It is the supreme legislative body of India. The Indian Parliament comprises the President and the two Houses – Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and Lok Sabha (House of the People). 
  • The President has the power to summon and prorogue either House of Parliament or to dissolve Lok Sabha. 
• Convening a session of Parliament:
  • The power to convene a session of Parliament rests with the government. 
  • The decision is taken by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs.
    • The committee currently comprises ministers, including those for Defence, Home, Finance, and Law. 
  • The decision of the Committee is formalised by the President, in whose name MPs are summoned to meet for a session.
• Three sessions of Parliament:
  • India does not have a fixed parliamentary calendar. By convention, Parliament meets for three sessions in a year. 
  • Budget Session:
    • The longest, the Budget Session, starts towards the end of January and concludes by the end of April or the first week of May. 
    • The session has a recess so that Parliamentary Committees can discuss the budgetary proposals.
  • Monsoon Session:
    • The second session is the three-week Monsoon Session, which usually begins in July and finishes in August. 
  • Winter Session:
    • The parliamentary year ends with a three-week-long Winter Session, which is held from November to December.
• Duration & dates of the sessions:
  • Over the years, governments have shuffled around the dates of sessions to accommodate political and legislative exigencies. 
  • Sessions have been cut short or delayed to allow the government to issue Ordinances. For example, in 2016, the Budget Session was broken up into two separate sessions to enable the issuance of an Ordinance.
  • Sessions have also been stretched on occasions. 

UK Model of Parliament WorkingIn the UK, Parliament meets over 100 days a year & opposition parties get  20 days on which they decide the agenda for discussion.The main opposition party gets 17 days and the remaining three days are given to the second-largest opposition party. In the UK, the PM is bound by a constitutional convention to respond to questions directly posed to him by MPs.Canada also has a similar concept of opposition days.

Issues & criticisms on Parliamentary functioning 

• Decline in the sittings days:
  • Over the years, there has been a decline in the sittings days of Parliament. During the first two decades of Parliament, Lok Sabha met for an average of a little more than 120 days a year. 
  • This has come down to approximately 70 days in the last decade.
  • Reasons for fewer sittings:
    • One institutional reason given for this is the reduction in the workload of Parliament by its Standing Committees
    • However, several Committees have recommended that Parliament should meet for at least 120 days in a year. 
• Disruptions & Political rivalries:
  • Disruption has become the norm, with the Opposition seeking to use the debates as a ploy to gain publicity.
  • Representatives of political parties are utilising Parliament more to showcase political spectacle than to use it as a forum for serious legislative functioning.
• Resort to money Bill route: 
  • Several key pieces of legislation have been passed as Money Bills, despite the fact that they did not fit this category.
• Less scrutiny of Bills: 
  • Most of the bills were passed without any scrutiny, as they were passed in the same session in which they were introduced.
• Frequent Adjournment of Parliament sessions:
  • In recent times, Parliament sessions are adjourned frequently. This hampers the work of Parliament.

Suggestions

• Increase in the working days of Parliament: 
  • Our legislature should meet throughout the year, like the parliaments of most developed democracies.
    • But these increased days will not help prevent disruptions if opposition parties don’t have the opportunity to debate and highlight important issues.
• Televise parliamentary committee proceedings: 
  • Bipartisanship and well-researched discussions are often the hallmarks of parliamentary committees. 
  • Yet this crucial aspect of the parliamentary process is well-hidden from the public.
• Bring Transparency to the Clash of Interests: 
  • Before legislation is passed, various publics and groups find a way to articulate their viewpoints to key political decision-makers.
    • In India, this usually happens behind the scenes.
• Developing an Index: 
  • A parliamentary disruption index should be created as a measure to monitor disruptions in legislatures and check indiscipline. 
  • It would also lead to the availability of more time for debate and discussion on issues before the House.

Way Ahead

• There are enough tools, mechanisms, structures and precedents in India’s parliamentary history that can be relied upon by the current set of legislators to bring back useful deliberation. 
• Parliamentarians must realise that the bedrock of a functioning democracy is a flourishing legislature.

Digital India Programme

In News

• The Digital India Programme has made the country digitally empowered in the area of technology.

About the Digital India programme 

• Vision:
  • Government launched the Digital India programme with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge-based economy, by ensuring
    • digital access, 
    • digital inclusion, 
    • digital empowerment and 
    • bridging the digital divide. 
• The programme is centred on three key vision areas: 
  • Digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen, 
  • Governance and services on demand, and 
  • Digital empowerment of citizens. 
• Goal:
  • The overall goal is to ensure that 
    • Digital technologies improve the life of every citizen, 
    • Expand India’s digital economy, 
    • Create investment and employment opportunities and 
    • Create digital technological capabilities in India.
• Outcomes of the programme:
  • Digital India has considerably reduced the distance between the Government and citizens. 
  • It has also helped in the delivery of substantial services directly to the beneficiary in a transparent and corruption-free manner. 
  • In the process, India has emerged as one of the pre-eminent nations of the world to use technology to transform the lives of its citizens.

Key initiatives undertaken by MeitY under the Digital India programme:Aadhaar: Aadhaar provides 12 digits biometric and demographic-based identity that is unique, lifelong, online and authenticable. It has also given statutory backing through The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.Over 135.5 crore residents have been enrolled.Common Services Centres:CSCs are offering government and business services in digital mode in rural areas through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). Over 400 digital services are being offered by these CSCs.So far, 5.21 Lakh CSCs are functional (including urban & rural areas) across the country.DigiLocker: Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with the collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. Digital Locker has more than 13.7 crore users and more than 562 crore documents.Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG):For providing government services to citizens through mobile. More than 1668 e-Services and over 20,197 bill payment services are made available at UMANG.e-Sign: e-Sign service facilitates instant signing of forms/documents online by citizens in a legally acceptable form. MyGov:It is a citizen engagement platform that is developed to facilitate participatory governance. Presently, over 2.76+ crore users are registered with MyGov.MeriPehchaan:National Single Sign-on (NSSO) platform called MeriPehchaan has been launched in July 2022 to facilitate/provide citizens ease of access to government portals. Jeevan Pramaan: Jeevan Pramaan envisages digitizing the whole process of securing the life certificate for pensioners. Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan (PMGDISHA): The Government has approved the scheme to usher in digital literacy in rural India.Unified Payment Interface (UPI):It is the leading digital payment platform. It has onboarded 376 banks and has facilitated 730 crore transactions (by volume) worth Rs 11.9 lakh crore.

Significance of the Digital India campaign

• Ending corruption: 
  • The Digital India campaign has helped save Rs 2.25 lakh crore from falling into the wrong hands in the past eight years.
• Eliminating middle-men: 
  • Digital India has saved money for the common man by ending the network of middle-men
• Transparency: 
  • The transparency that has come due to Digital India has eliminated corruption at various levels adversely affecting the poor and the middle class.
• Direct Benefit Transfer: 
  • In the last eight years, more than Rs 23 lakh crore has been transferred through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to beneficiaries.
• The trio of Jan Dhan, Mobile and Aadhaar, or JAM: 
  • It has provided maximum benefit to the poor and the middle class.
• Finding missing children: 
  • Digital India has helped missing children reconnect with their parents.
• Digital India helped the government tackle the crisis arising out of the Covid pandemic: 
  • CoWin and Aarogya Setu are two mobile applications that helped provide 200 crore vaccine doses.
• Ending digital divide: 
  • Digital India has also helped bridge the digital divide that exists between rural and urban India.

Challenges

• Gender gap:
  • Indian women are 15 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone and 33 per cent less likely to use mobile internet services than men.
  • Women constitute only one-third of internet users in India.
• Skewed penetration:
  • Among states, Maharashtra has the highest internet penetration, followed by Goa and Kerala, while Bihar has the lowest, followed by Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
• India’s global rank:
  • According to the UN’s e-participation index (2022), which is a composite measure of three important dimensions of e-government, namely provision of online services, telecommunication connectivity and human capacity, India ranks 105 out of 193 nations.
• Online safety: 
  • According to a survey, more than half of young women have experienced violence online, including sexual harassment, threatening messages and having private images shared without consent. 
  • Women’s rights defenders and female journalists were targeted for abuse more than most.
• Inadequate artificial intelligence:
  • The third threat comes from badly designed artificial intelligence systems that repeat and exacerbate discrimination. 

Way Ahead

• Creation of an entity:
  • An empowered entity needs to be set up which is accountable for quality and timeliness to design and construct digital highways, and their rural branches, and ensure their optimum utilisation by sharing the infrastructure.
• Skills:
  • Digital skills, required today both for life and for livelihoods, must be imparted on a war footing by transforming government digital literacy programmes into skilling missions, and expanding outreach, including through the private sector.
• Online safety of women:
  • Social media sites can use their “algorithm power” to proactively tackle the issue of safety.
  • Government needs to strengthen laws that hold online abusers to account, and the public to speak up whenever they witnessed abuse

National Food Security Act (NFSA)

In News

• The Union Cabinet recently decided to provide free foodgrains to all 81 crore beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) till December 2023.

More about the news

• New changes in NFSA:
  • Beneficiaries will now get 35kg of foodgrains free for the next year and others will get 5kg for free in a month till December 2023. 
    • The Union government has estimated an additional amount of ?2 lakh crore for the scheme. Entire expenses for the scheme would be borne by the Union Government.
  • What is NFSA?
    • The Union government provides food grains (rice at Rs 3 per kg, wheat at Rs 2 per kg, and coarse grains at Rs 1 per kg) under the NFSA.
    • The act aims to ensure people’s food and nutritional security by assuring access to enough high-quality food at reasonable prices.
    • The NFSA covers 50 per cent of the urban population and 75 per cent of the rural population. 
    • There are two categories of beneficiary households under the NFSA:
      • Antyoday Anna Yojana (AAY): the AAY households are entitled to 35 kg of foodgrains per month irrespective of the number of family members.
      • The Priority Households: the priority households get food grains depending on the number of family members (each member 5 kg per month).
• The government has discontinued the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana: 
  • It was launched in 2020 amid Covid-19 under which 5 kg of free food grains was provided to every person on top of the NFSA entitlement of 5 kg of foodgrains at subsidised rates.
  • The scheme has now been merged with the NFSA.
• The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs also approved the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for copra for the 2023 season.
  • It is chaired by the PM.
  • The approval is based on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. 
  • The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. [NAFED] and the National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation [NCCF] will continue to act as Central Nodal Agencies for the procurement of copra and de-husked coconut under the Price Support Scheme. 

Significance of the move 

• Food security legislation: for the first time India will have a Central food security legislation which gives the poor the right to receive 5 kg of food grains free of cost.
• The decision softens the blow as the poor may suffer with the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana being discontinued.
• Saving revenue: Discontinuing the PMGKAY would save the government Rs 15,000 crore a month or about Rs 1.8 lakh crore a year.

Way forward

• PM’s vision: He has taken a historic decision to provide food security to the poor free of cost across the country.
  • The Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan Ann Yojna also ensured 5kg of foodgrains for the poor for free for a long time.
• Buffer stocks: The Government has been maintaining that the country has adequate storage of foodgrains to meet the welfare schemes.
• Reforms needed: The NITI Aayog has suggested that the national rural and urban coverage ratio be reduced from the existing 75-50 to 60-40. If this reduction happens, the number of beneficiaries under the NFSA will drop to 71.62 crores based on the projected population in 2020.
  • To make these changes in the law, the government will have to amend sub-section (2) of Section 3 of the NFSA which will require parliamentary approval.

Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act 2022

In News

• Recently, the Governor of Uttarakhand gave consent to the State’s Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act.

Key Points

• Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion Act:
  • This law was made in Uttarakhand in 2018. 
  • There was a provision of punishment of one to five years for conversion by force or inducement.
• Important Provisions of Amendment Act:
  • Strict Provisions: It is a more stringent anti-conversion Act that makes unlawful religious conversion in the state a cognizable and non-bailable offence. The conversion by force, greed or fraud will be a crime in the State.
  • Greater Punishment: Under this, there is a provision for a jail term of at least three years and up to 10 years of punishment for religious conversion. 
  • Higher Fines: In the new law, a fine of ?50,000 has been made compulsory. Anyone found guilty of conversion will have to pay up to ?5 lacs to the victim.
• Need for the Amendment:
  • There was a long-standing demand in Uttarakhand for strict action against forced conversions. 
  • Amendment in the 2018 Act was necessary to remove certain difficulties in the law. 
  • Also, it is important to “equally strengthen the importance of every religion” under Articles 25, 26, 27, and 28 of the Constitution.

Freedom of Religion

• About:
  • The framers of the Indian constitution debated the inclusion of the “right to propagate” as a fundamental right. 
  • Article 25(1) of the Constitution says “all persons” are equally entitled to the freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion freely.
  • Article 26:  Freedom to manage religious affairs
  • Article 27: Freedom to pay taxes for the promotion of any particular religion
  • Article 28: Freedom to attend religious instruction or worship in certain educational institutions.
• State Laws:
  • There are a few states (Arunachal Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand) which have enacted anti-conversion laws in India.
• Concerns:
  • Some members of the Constituent Assembly wanted to replace the word “propagate” with “practise privately”, fearing that the right would create room for forceful conversions.
  • The right to propagate was ultimately kept in the Constitution but States and civil society have knocked on the doors of the judiciary time and again to interpret this freedom. 

Criticisms 

• Affects the right to privacy: The Anti-Conversion law enacted a restriction on conversion to one’s choice of religion, practice, and propagation and thereby infringes the right to privacy of individuals.
• Insecurities amongst Minorities: Religious leaders of minority communities faced apprehension of being arrested and prosecuted under anti-conversion law. 

Verdicts on Religious Freedom

• Arun Ghosh vs. State of West Bengal 1950:
  • The Supreme Court (SC) held that attempts to raise communal passions through forcible conversions would be considered a breach of public order, affecting the community at large. 
  • It held that it was within the power of States under Entry 1 of the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution to enact local Freedom of Religion laws.
• Rev. Stainislaus vs. State of Madhya Pradesh 1960s
  • A five-judge Bench of the SC dissected Article 25 to hold that “the Article does not grant the right to convert other persons to one’s own religion but to transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenets.”
  • The court upheld the validity of two regional anti-conversion laws of the 1960s — the Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantraya Adhiniyam (1968) and the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (1967).
  • It interpreted that “What is freedom for one is freedom for the other in equal measure and there can, therefore, be no such thing as a fundamental right to convert any person to one’s own religion,” 
• Justice Rohinton F. Nariman Bench 2021:
  • In 2021, the petitioner approached the top court alleging “mass” conversions across the country “by hook or by crook”
  • The Court said people were free to choose their own religion.
  • The Court had said that every person was the final judge of their own choice of religion, and invoked the Puttaswamy judgment (2018) to hold that religious faith was a part of the fundamental right to privacy.

Conclusion

• Everybody has the right to choose their religion, but not by forced conversion or by giving temptation.
• The law will prove to be a historical decision against the conspiracy of religious conversion in the shadow of fear, temptation, and other fraudulent means.

Uncontrolled Re-Entries of Satellites

In News

• An open letter published by the Outer Space Institute (OSI) calls for both national and multilateral efforts to restrict uncontrolled re-entries of rockets and satellites.
  • The Outer Space Institute (OSI) is a network of world-leading space experts that aims to address challenges arising from the use and exploration of space. It is based in Canada.

Uncontrolled re-entry

• Uncontrolled re-entries is the phenomenon of rocket parts falling back to earth in an unguided fashion once their missions are complete.
• In an uncontrolled re-entry, the rocket stage simply falls.
• Its downward path is determined by its shape, angle of descent, air currents and other characteristics.
•  It will also disintegrate as it falls. As the smaller pieces fan out, the potential radius of impact will increase on the ground.
•  Some pieces burn up entirely while others don’t.

Concerns about the re-entries

•  Speed: More than size, it is the speed at which space debris is travelling, which makes them deadly.
•  Rise in launches: The number of rocket launches has been surging with the advent of reusable rocket stages. Today, there are more than 6,000 satellites in orbit, most of them in low-earth (100-2,000 km) and geostationary (35,786 km) orbits, placed there in more than 5,000 launches.
•  Impact on Land: Most rocket parts have landed in oceans principally because the earth’s surface has more water than land. But many have dropped on land as well.
• Population: The risks from uncontrolled re-entries are growing as the global population grows. Many places have become more densely populated. Conservative estimates place the casualty risk from uncontrolled rocket body re-entries as being on the order of 10% in the next decade.
•  North vs South: Countries in the ‘Global South face a “disproportionately higher” risk of casualties than the ‘Global North’.
• Impact on Airlines: An impact anywhere on an airliner with the debris of mass above 300 grams would produce a catastrophic failure, meaning all people on board would be killed.
• Chemical Contamination: If re-entering stages still hold fuel, atmospheric and terrestrial chemical contamination is another risk.

Examples

• Parts of a SpaceX Falcon 9 that fell down in Indonesia in 2016 included two “refrigerator-sized fuel tanks”.
• Parts of a Russian rocket in 2018 and China’s Long March 5B rockets in 2020 and 2022 hit parts of Indonesia, Peru, India and the Ivory Coast, among others.

Is there any international agreement to tackle it?

•  There is no international binding agreement to ensure rocket stages always perform controlled re-entries nor on the technologies with which to do so.
• The Liability Convention 1972 requires countries to pay for damages, not prevent them.

1-in-10,000 threshold

•  Some states has adopted a safety threshold of one predicted casualty per 10,000 launches (0.01%), above which controlled re-entries are supposed to be required.
• This means launches should keep the chance of a casualty from a re-entering body to be below 0.01%.

Criticism of 1-in-10,000 threshold

• But this threshold is arbitrary and not widely accepted internationally.
• Even those states that use it have often waived the requirement on multiple occasions when compliance is deemed to be unreasonably expensive.
• Most importantly, the 1-in-10,000 threshold does not account for cumulative risks from all launches over a period of time.
• This threshold makes little sense in an era when new technologies and mission profiles enable controlled re-entries.

Recommendations by OSI to minimize damage

•  While the OSI letter admits that any kind of re-entry will inevitably damage some ecosystems, it recommends that bodies aim for an ocean in order to avoid human casualties.
•  Future solutions should be extended to re-entering satellites as well.
•  The focus should be on developing and using smaller satellites as they are likelier to burn up during re-entry.

The Urban Learning Internship Programme (TULIP)

In News

• Recently, the TULIP platform was in the news as since the launch of the TULIP Programme in 2020 more than 25,000 internship opportunities have been advertised.

About TULIP

• Development:
  • The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MoE) and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has developed TULIP.
• Aim:
  • It is a platform to provide internships to students and graduates in ULBs, Smart Cities, and Parastatals of States/UTs.
• Eligibility:
  • The internships under TULIP are open to Indian Citizens who graduate from an undergraduate program and can apply within 18 months from graduating. 
  • It is open to courses and streams as prescribed by ULBs/smart cities in their requirements and both AICTE-affiliated and non-AICTE college graduates can apply.
• Goals of TULIP:
  • To provide a platform to connect fresh graduates with urban governments.
  • To provide the government and industry with a pool of well-trained professionals.
  • To make fresh graduates more market ready.
  • To expose young graduates to real-life learning in urban environments.
• Duration of program:
  • The duration of the internship will be a minimum of 8 weeks up to 1 year.

Lion @ 47: Vision for Amrutkal

In News

• Recently, the Project Lion document titled “Lion @ 47: Vision for Amrutkal” has been launched by the Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

More in news

• Gujarat’s Barda Wildlife Sanctuary: It has been identified as a potential second home for Asiatic lions.
  • It is located near Porbandar which is 100 kilometres from the Gir National Park. 

About

• Project Lion: 
  • It envisages landscape ecology-based conservation of the Asiatic Lion in Gujarat by integrating conservation and eco-development. 
  • The Project is being implemented in the Gir landscape in Gujarat which is the last home of the Asiatic lion.
• Objectives:
  • To secure & restore lions’ habitats for managing its growing population.
  • Scale up livelihood generation and participation of local communities.
  • Become a global hub of knowledge on big cat disease diagnostics and treatment.
  • Create inclusive biodiversity conservation through project lion initiative.
• Distribution:
  • They are now distributed in nine districts of Junagadh, Gir Somnath, Amreli, Bhavnagar, Botad, Porbandar, Jamnagar, Rajkot and Surendranagar, covering around 30,000 square kilometres, which is termed the Asiatic Lion Landscape. 

Challenges

• Vulnerable to extinction: Efforts were being made since the 1990s to find a relocation site for the Asiatic lions within Gujarat and outside the state, considering that the species is vulnerable to extinction threats from epidemics because of low genetic diversity.
• Geographic separation is the primary objective of translocation to establish a second free-ranging population of lions to mitigate conservation risks.

About LionsScientific name: Lions, one of the largest animal species on earth are scientifically named ‘Panthera Leo’.Historical Significance: They have an illustrious place in India’s history and culture, with their earliest known references found in the pillars of the Mauryan empire. The Indian national emblem is adorned by the majestic lion on all four sides.IUCN Status: Asiatic Lion: EndangeredThe Asiatic lion (Panthera Leo) is presently found only in and around the Gir Forest in the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat in western India.Role in the animal kingdom: Lions hold an indispensable place in the ecosystem, they are an apex predator of their habitat, and are responsible for checking the population of grazers, thus helping in maintaining the ecological balance.Threats: Trophy hunting and Loss of natural habitatConservation Efforts Taken:Asiatic Lion Conservation Project: It was launched by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC).The lion census is conducted once every five years.

J&K Land Grants Rules, 2022

In News

• The J&K Lieutenant Governor’s administration recently notified fresh land rules under J&K Land Grant Rules-2022 and replaced the J&K Land Grants Rules-1960.

About J&K Land Grants Rules-1960

• It dealt with the special rules to grant government land on lease in the erstwhile State of J&K.
  • Prime locations such as Srinagar, Jammu, Gulmarg and Pahalgam were opened for construction of hotels, commercial structures and residential buildings in the past.
• Exception: No such land shall be granted on lease to a person, who is not a permanent resident of the State.

New Land Laws

• No extension of Lease:
  • The leases of current landowners will not be extended in case of their lease expiry.
    • An expert committee will enlist all properties where the lease had ended. It will be e-auctioned afresh.
• Reduction in lease period:
  • Unlike the previous up to 99 years of the lease, the lease period has been reduced to 40 years.
• Penalty:
  • The government has asked the outgoing leaseholders to evict properties or else face evictions under the new rules.
• Eligibility:
  • Property:
    • It has diversified the use of land on lease to education, healthcare, agriculture, tourism, skill development and development of traditional art, craft, culture and languages.
    • The land could be leased for hydroelectric projects, stadiums, playgrounds, gymnasiums or other recreational purposes.
  • People:
    • The rules open bidding to any person legally competent under Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872.
    • These rules deem a person or an entity in default of Government Revenue accrued to the government under the J&K Land Grant Act, 1960 or Government convicted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 shall not be eligible for participation in the auction.

Implication

• The new rules have hundreds of properties open for fresh auction where outsiders could also participate.