Gov­ern­ment is bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment soon to en­sure the re­moval of state-land squat­ters with­in sev­en days, says Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath. Bharath in­di­cat­ed this at Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing. He put the an­nounce­ment in the con­text of the Gov­ern­ment's thrust to in­crease food pro­duc­tion, with its 2012-2015 Food Ac­tion plan and the re­sul­tant need for more agri­cul­tur­al land.

He said the Gov­ern­ment planned to make 4,223 acres of land avail­able in two weeks' time and was al­so re­struc­tur­ing land-lease ap­pli­ca­tion sys­tems, which some­times took 25 years to com­plete. To fur­ther free up state land for agri­cul­ture, he said, Gov­ern­ment was ze­ro­ing in on squat­ters who have tried to take ad­van­tage of state land in re­cent times. He not­ed sud­den "colonies" be­ing set up on some state lands.

Bharath said Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly been ham­strung on the re­moval of squat­ters by is­sues af­fect­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands di­vi­sion and the Land Set­tle­ment Agency. How­ev­er, Bharath said min­istries, in­clud­ing Agri­cul­ture, Hous­ing, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice and oth­er agen­cies, re­cent­ly got to­geth­er to draft leg­is­la­tion that would close the loop­holes.

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved amend­ments which will en­sure that squat­ting is "an un­equiv­o­cal of­fence." Bharath said the amend­ments will al­low for im­me­di­ate re­moval of squat­ters. Squat­ters will be giv­en sev­en days to re­move their pos­ses­sions be­fore struc­tures are de­mol­ished. They will al­so have 24 hours af­ter de­mo­li­tion to re­move any re­main­ing pos­ses­sions.

Pro­posed laws will al­so give the Land Set­tle­ment Agency the abil­i­ty to con­tract oth­ers to as­sist with re­movals. Say­ing the amend­ments would not be retroac­tive, Bharath not­ed that peo­ple who have been on state land for more than five years are in a po­si­tion to be reg­u­larised.

As a re­sult of the amend­ments, Bharath pro­ject­ed that there would be more state lands for agri­cul­ture and a re­duc­tion in the cost of food and con­se­quent­ly in­fla­tion. He said the food bill is the biggest con­trib­u­tor to in­fla­tion rates. Bharath said the amend­ments will be tak­en to Par­lia­ment soon. Bharath said squat­ters who were re­moved and who qual­i­fy for state as­sis­tance would re­ceive help.