PANJIM: Goycho Kul Mundkaracho Avaaz has raised their strong objection to the proposed The Goa Restriction on Transfer of Agricultural Land Bill, 2023, which will come up for debate on the Floor of the House, on Friday.
Addressing mediapersons on Thursday, Avaaz members urged the government not to pass the Bill without public consultation as the Bill lays focus only on paddy fields while the other forms of agriculture are ignored and thrown open for purchase. They have threatened to come on the street if the Bill is passed.
Advocate Suresh Palkar said that the proposed Bill has murdered ‘agriculture’ by deleting the words such as horticulture, dairy farming, poultry farming, stock breeding and grazing from the Bill, thus failing to give them any protection.
He pointed out that as per Land Revenue Code, agriculture means increasing of useful or valuable products, which derive nutriment from the soil with the aid of human labour and skill and includes horticulture, dairy farming, poultry farming, stock breeding and grazing.
Also, the Agriculture Tenancy Act includes ‘horticulture and increasing of food crops grass or garden produce, as agriculture’.
“However, this new Bill talks only about paddy fields. This Bill murders the agriculture by changing the definition of the word. This Bill has supersedes Tenancy Act, Revenue Code , Mundkar Act, all that gives protection to agriculture land,” he said.
Palkar also points out that the Bill does not speak anything about banning or restricting sale of agriculture land to non-Goans but only to non-agriculturalists.
However, he said that the Bill has provisions for industries, cooperative farming societies who intend to buy agricultural land to pursue farming.
“This clearly shows that the government is out to give away our paddy fields and other agriculture land to builders, industries, etc,” he added.