Official Land Holding of the Government

What is the issue?

• The Centre does not know exactly how much property it owns.
• This has created various problems with the economy and the land use pattern of the urban areas.

What is the official status?

• The information provided by the Government Land Information System (GLIS) is incomplete.
• Various Central Ministries admit to owning only about 13,50,500 hectares of land.
• But disparate official sources suggest that the correct figure is several times more.
• Also a large proportion of government land lies unused.
• The Ministries of Railways and Defence, respectively, have 43,000 hectares and 32,780 hectares of land lying vacant.
• According to reports of the CAG, the 13 major port trusts have 14,728 hectares of land lying idle.

What is the problem of unused land?

• High Value - A large part of the unused land is high-value property in prime areas in major cities.
• Land hoarding by government agencies has created artificial scarcity.
• It is one of the main reasons for skyrocketing urban real estate prices.
• Middle and lower-income households find adequate housing unaffordable.
• High land prices also reduce competitiveness by increasing the cost of industrial and development projects.
• The allocation of unused land is rife with corruption.

• Urban planning - To maintain efficiency amidst increasing population and economic growth, the Floor space index (FSI) should also increase.
• However, most Indian cities defy these basic tenets of urban planning due to the large areas of unused or underutilised government land with an irresponsibly low FSI.
• The FSI in Shanghai is four times of that of Delhi and Mumbai.
• Economic growth - Solving the problem of wastage could generate employment and pull masses out of poverty.
• Another report by the CAG on SEZs shows that 53% of the total land acquired by the government for these zones remains unused.

What should be done?

• The need of the hour is a comprehensive inventory of land resources and usage patterns for all government branches.
• It should include information on the location of each property, its dimensions, the legal title, current and planned use, and any applicable land use restrictions.
• The government should also agree to disclose its land use and release of excess land, the use of which it cannot justify.

Quick Facts

Floor space index (FSI)

• Floor space index (FSI) is the total floor area built per square metre of land.
• If if a single-storey building occupies 50% of a plot, the FSI would be 1/2.
• If the building is expanded vertically to have four stories, the FSI will go up to two (4 times 1/2), as the effective floor area has quadrupled.

Source: The Hindu