LAND-SPECULATION NATIONAL-SPORT-OF INDIA

To 27-07-2006
The Prime Minister of India
New Delhi.
Dear Sir Sub: Speculation in Land, National Sport of India, Result
millions living on streets while most of India’s rich including
Government officers, Politicians, Judges, Traders make merry at their
cost. Any Answers please.

Please refer to my earlier letter (copy of letter dated 27-03-2006 addressed to Hon
Shri Hansraj Bhardwaj sent to you in July). I quote from it as below:-

1. From Para-44 of that letter:- As you are aware, speculation in land has become the national Sport of India & Indians, every body including Governments, State Instrumentalities, politicians, Traders, Government officers & officials, Judges & other rich & powerful persons are engaged in buying, hoarding & selling at profit, land all over the country. In case of housing land in urban areas, the State Instrumentalities & Authorities are themselves the biggest mafia.
2. From Para-41of that letter:- Land for Housing purposes covers all the paraphernalia that is necessary for man’s physical convenience from the site of his house to his roads to his railways, shops, public places, Recreation spaces & his factories. Man has always used land lavishly if he has been able to afford it. He has never paid any heed to the limitation of land available to him either through a willing seller or a willing Government which has often used the land Acquisition Act in a Ruthless manner as it has the other instrumentalities at its command-namely the Judiciary; Legislature; Executive; the Military & the Police. To achieve its objective of usurping the resources of the Country to redistribute them to a chosen few. This 10% of the populace comprising of Government functionaries, Judiciary, Bureaucrats & top brass of the Army & Police & some super rich persons are thus consuming the dreams & aspirations of the 90 % have-nots of the Country.
3. a. From my letter dated 10-06-2005 to Chief Secretary U.P.:-Every day
demolition of buildings & removal of encroachment from Government
lands is taking place, while removal of mafia elements is welcome.
But as always even in these drive lakhs of poor are being evicted from
their skimpy shelters (over Government Lands, from the roads, from the railway lines, from the drains, from the footpath land, from above the sewer nalas, from the patris besides the canals, from Sewerage carrying cement pipes stored near the roads) by these lion hearted men of the Government departments with police help.
b. Now the point is that why such a situation has arisen that the poor people have to encroach upon these lands & live in worst conditions than even Beasts in small hovels. Talking about Kanpur when Jawaharlal Nehru visited Kanpur, soon after independence, in the early Fifties, he used these very words when he visited a few hataas on G.T.road in Kanpur. Since then ten five year plans have gone by & the nett result is that now there are fifty times more such Beast like creatures(poor slum dwellers), living in smaller hovels. The situation is the same in all the cities of the Country.
c. Such a horrible situation has arisen because the very Instrumentalities of the State created to rectify the situation have instead compounded & worsened the situation by turning themselves in to land speculators, going in for large scale Land acquisitions through out the fifties & the Sixties & the Seventies & so on & thereafter on priority one the land is released in bulk to the rich & Government buyers, who buy the land without any need, thereafter to the other citizens at exorbitant rates & almost never to the have-nots, who being deprived of livelihood opportunities in villages are driven to City in search of a living, a fact recognized even by the Supreme Court.Such poor, in fact comprise at least 80 % of the City population & they eke out a living by small jobs, domestic help, thela vendors, barbers, gardeners, vegetable vendors, Cobblers, Sweepers etc etc & etc.
d. The Government departments have by manipulating the Land prices, (by the revenue department to get more stamp duty & the other departments to earn profit) have not only committed a grave crime against humanity but have created such a situation that if the Government itself requires any land, to, improve the Heart (core) of the Cities, (which is rotting owing to the heavy congestion, on account of their unplanned development of about 100 to 200 years ago, when there were no town planning laws), or if the Government wishes to broaden some road, it will be in no position to acquire any land because a small parcel will cost billions of rupees.
4. From Para-42of that letter:- As social status has always been associated with control over more & yet more land, the rising fortunes of of a urban family puts more & more pressure on scarce Housing Land. A family will first move from a tenement flat to a suburban house with a small garden thence to a larger house & so on this is of course justifiable but to a limit. The Super rich will shift to mansions with acres of grounds, lakes & orchards. Some even maintain a number of residences This rape of scarce land has been allowed to go on by the help of a sympathetic Government which has always had a soft corner for the Elite as they themselves belong to the same strata of society. While the deprived sections are deprived of even the minimum land needed for a shelter over their heads.
5. From Para-43of that letter:- The Urban Land ceiling Act-1976 failed due to a corrupt Administration & captive Judiciary & later on instead of correcting & resolutely implementing it a Elitist Minister threw the Act in to the waste paper basket & scrapped it altogether & since then property prices have risen ten fold due to wide scale speculation in land.
6. From Para-45 of that letter:- Government Instrumentalities are hoarding the acquired lands (acquired on a large scale from hapless farmers even at as low a price as a few nai paise per square meters & the same land after hoarding is being sold at thousands of rupees per square meters) like Sukkhi lala of Mother India (who used to hoard grain & ask for the honor of needy women in return for it)& releasing land in small quantities of schemes of a few acres each thus creating a artificial shortage of land & jacking up the prices every now & then, the release price bears no resemblance to the cost of acquisition & the increase in rates are wholly unjustified. While all the other necessities of life including income of honest Countrymen have seen a jump of about 30 to 50 times over the last fifty years, the price of Land has gone up by about two thousand times, taking it beyond the means of the majority.
7. From Para-46 of that letter:- The high cost of the basics of life is turning everyone in to thief those in the Government who are not on seats of power & thus denied extra income by way of bribes are being forced to resort to other questionable means to supplement their incomes. The Army is being charged of selling off petrol during transportation & instead carrying water in its tankers & dumping in the fuel dump(case reported from Jammu recently) then there was the News of selling off of subsidized Liquor of Army Canteens in to the open market by Army Generals. Such a situation is deplorable but how do you expect a well read, sophisticated Army Officer to pay for the professional education (Medical/Engineering/MBA/) of his Children which can presently cost about Rs twenty-thirty lakhs per person in India. How can he buy a House for himself which in keeping with his status can cost upwards of Rs one Crore in a good-sized City.(actually in delhi mumbai & metros it can cost upwards of five crores) Are you paying that kind of a Salary to him ( More recently there has come to light a ghotala by the Army generals & other officers in Dal/Rations while yet another general is accused of Ghotala in purchase of meat ..)News paper cuttings are annexed as Annexure-1. Therefore by allowing for large-scale speculation in land as well as surrendering the Education & Health services to the Mafia forces you are destroying the Institution of the Army as well.
8. From Para 47 of that letter:- Thus being denied from much needed Housing Land, the poor clustered around & settled in to slums on these vast & surplus Government Lands, they settled on Railway lines, on the foot paths, on the roads, on & in the drains, in cement sewer-pipes lying on roads on Junkyards & even Land fill Sites & all other unhygienic areas where they get a chance- from where they are uprooted time & again, with the help of the Police by the brave hearted men of these Authorities as well as the High Courts & Supreme Courts who have never gone in to the root of the problem & simply harp on such & such Law. & never suggested a solution.
9. From Para 48 of that letter:- It will be interesting to note the Observations of the Supreme Court in three cases to reach the conclusion as to how we have failed after independence to plan for our poor who were much better of under the British in any case under them there was no dearth of housing sites. It was observed in the case of State of west Bengal v/s Terra Firma Investment & Trading private Ltd, reported in 1995SCC(1)125 “during the British period the villages were self sufficient & thus there was very little urban growth” ………..direction-10:-“the development of city or urban area is to last for centuries as such authorities are expected to anticipate & foresee the problems that may arise due to future growth of the Population”.
10. From Para 49 of that letter:- Now compare this with the Observation of the Supreme Court in the case of Olga Tellis & Ors v/s Bombay Municipal Corporation & ors reported in 1986 AIR, SC,180 & 1985SCC(3)545 & thereafter in the case of K.Chandru etc etc V/s State of Tamil Nadu reported in 1986AIR,SC204 & 1985 SCC(3) 536 wherein it is observed “the massive migration of rural population to big Cities is because of lack of livelihood in the villages. If he is evicted from the slums, pavement in city then his very right to life is in jeopardy in violation of Article 21 & 19(1)(e) & (g).
11. From Para 50 of that letter:- The Supreme Court clearly said that Slums are due to the failure of the Authorities in implementing the Master Plan provisions. All this was merely lip service, the Supreme Court has failed abjectly to see that no plans have in fact ever been made for the poor in the first place & the Master Plans are Patterned on the western pattern & cater mainly to the elite.
12. From Para 51 of that letter:- The Governments are compounding the acute problem of Housing lands in the cities by charging land use conversion money.[ About six months ago I was in Gurgaon, there I came to know that The Haryana Government had fixed a fee of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 Lakh per acre of land as conversion fee, depending upon the area & a further sum of Rs One crore per acre was being collected privately as bribe for the politicians in power & when about one thousand crores will be collected as bribe, then the Government will bring about the notification to allow the conversion from Agricultural to Residential & more for Commercial .Add to this the Rs One crore an acre that the farmers are now asking for their land. Therefore the Land will cost about 2.5 crores per acre to the Builder/Developer or Rs 6000/= per square meter now out of this minimum 50% is left for roads open spaces/parks etc, thus the sellable land will cost about Rs 12,000/= per square meter, then the builder will have to spend about Rs 1000/= per square meters to make the roads, Electric lines, sewer lines/water lines, parks etc. Now add to this Administrative expenses, interest etc & the land cost to builder will be about Rs 14000/= per square meter. Thus the selling price can not be less than Rs 16000/= per squre meters, actual price in Gurgaon as on date is about thirty thousand Rs per square meters or more. Therefore even for the poorest of poor if entitlement of fifty square meters is estimated, then a fifty square meters plot will cost about Rs 8 lakhs minimum although present cost is about Rs 16 lakhs. Add at least Rs two lakh for construction at the bare minimum & the minimum cost will be Rs 10 lakh actual cost at present is 18 lakhs. Now if the lowest figure of 10 lakhs is taken as the base & assuming the present average family income of the poor to be Rs 2500/= per month & taking in to account the banks calculations who assume that a person can afford to buy a house worth four years total income only, A family can buy a house worth only about Rs one Lakh twenty thousand only. In the example case even the interest calculated on ten lakh rupees minimum taken at the lowest rate of seven percent will be about Rs 6000/= per month therefore the family will need an income of at least Rs 12000/= per month to pay for the house & subsist on starvation diet. Now what is the average family income of the poor? Not more than 2500/= per month (the class IV Government employee, who is ten times better placed than a poor worker earns about Rs 5000/= per month & the premium to seek a class IV job is about Rs one lakh & more as bribe). Therefore for all practical purposes the poor can not & are not able to afford a House/shelter & are forced to live like worms & ants in filthy slums.
13. No matter whatever the Governments may say, Agricultural land can not be saved by putting restrictions on its conversion to other uses or by levying Land use conversion charges on its conversion. All that such measures achieve is to deny scarce housing land, to the genuinely needy, by taking it out from their purchasing power & at the same time such measures result in concentration of this scarce housing lands in the hands of rich speculators.
14. The majority of black money earned, goes in to property, which in turn drives up the price taking it beyond the capacity of the needy. No matter how so ever high the authorities may fix the circle rate, the black money will drive the market rate to more than twice the circle rates & even for the purpose of Income tax, the Circle rate is taken as the gospel truth . In my City in Kanpur, the market rate in areas like Swaroop Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Civil Lines etc has gone up by 4 times in the last decade & is presently between 25000/= to 30000/= per square meter while the circle rate is less than half therefore any body buying even 200 square meter can safely park about thirty lakhs of his black money in one plot alone. People are having tens of plots in different cities. If you want to bring down corruption, You will have to control the purchase of land. No body should be allowed to buy land at will. Questions must be asked in the beginning of the deal so that only the needy buy this scarce commodity. The Government control regarding land user should be limited to reasonable restrictions to prevent its haphazard development but these restrictions should be lenient keeping in view the fact that ours is a poor country & the majority of people will be denied of basic right of shelter if these restrictions are very rigid.
15. During the last two years, the banks by easy disbursement of loan & low interest rates have driven up the property rates by more than double, adding to the woes of the actual needy. Even the cost of construction material like cement, steel etc have gone up by more than 50% due to this. The Government took no steps to control the land prices before the banks went on a loaning spree. Lakhs of corrupt Government servants & business men, who never needed any loans, got the opportunity to get the white money from the banks in the shape of loans for purchase of property & were able to park an equal amount of their black money in each such property thereby triggering up the prices further, making it impossible for the needy to buy.
16. Now such a situation has arisen due to large scale speculation in land & the situation is such that no body is asked any question when he buys land, which is treated as any other freely tradable commodity. Therefore there is an immediate & crying need for putting a stop to land speculation activity in India. Following steps are needed at once.
i. Ceiling Act which was repealed in 1999 has to be re-enacted(after removing
the discrepancies under the earlier law) if the Country is to be saved. There should be
a ceiling of 300 to 500 sq meters per family in the case of plots & 3500 to 4000 Sq feet
in case of Flats & this ceiling should be the maximum that a family should be allowed
to buy in the entire country & should apply to all towns above 100000 (one lakh)
population.
ii. Owners of all vacant plots in excess of this limit should be allowed one years time to
sell them after which they should be acquired at maximum of one twentieth of the
declared price of acquisition by them.
iii. Ban Sale of Agricultural land in the cities & beyond 10 kilometers of their present boundaries to those whose families did not hold agricultural lands at the time of Agrarian reform Acts. This ban not to apply to qualified builders
iv. Give exemption to qualified builders including exemption from stamp duty with the
restriction that they will have to complete their Schemes within 5 years, by which time
all the land/flats built by them as per the layout plan should be sold & registered
in favor of purchasers.
v. Allow a minimum of 2.00 as F.A.R & in case of lesser ground coverage an
F.A.R of up to 3.50.Relax Master Plan Density provisions to more realistic levels.
vi. While providing for a maximum F.A.R, provide for a minimum F.A.R as well so
that only the needy buy the scarce land. Thus a minimum F.A.R of at least 1.5 should be enforced. Fix property tax rates on this basis. Start charging penal rates of property tax on properties which do not consume this minimum F.A.R within two years of purchase. Provide for compulsory Acquisition of all un-built-upon plots at a maximum of 50 % of the cost of its acquisition by the purchaser if they do not consume the minimum F.A.R. within five years of purchase.
vii. The minimum permissible F.A.R to be compulsorily occupied ,Thus an unoccupied dwelling unit to attract penal rate of property tax as compared to an occupied one.
viii. Immediately by a Central Act/ Constitutional Amendment , the Rent Control Acts in all the states should be revoked or amended to take out all portions above 200 square meters from its application . As it is the political parties/ Politicians are the only beneficiaries of these Rent Acts, they are occupying acres & acres of prime properties in the Cities & paying a negligible sum as rent while Lakhs of owners of these properties have died of starvation. The tenants of portions up to 200 sq meters should (subject to owners willingness) be given an option by way of right to buy their portions at 50% of the market rates, failing which they would have to vacate.
ix. Bring down the Stamp duty to maximum of 2 %.
x. Ensure for provision of minimum 50 square meter of Housing land to all slum
dwellers free of cost or at rates affordable to them based on the average
earnings of Indians after excluding the earnings of the higher earning ten % .
of the populace.
xi. Amend the Indian Registration Act & Indian Stamp Act & exclude lease/rent
deeds up to ten years from imposition of the Stamp duty, this will give sense of
security both to the owners & tenants, who will be able to enter in to a contract (presently eleven month contracts are being made to avoid stamp duty which are useless as the time period is impractical) &this will prevent lakhs of litigations.
xii. Ensure for provision of minimum 50 square meter of Housing land to all
slum dwellers free of cost or at rates affordable to them based on the average
earnings of Indians after excluding the earnings of the higher earning ten %
of the populace.
xiii. Acquire all surplus lands lying idle with Government departments, Mills
& shift the Government Officers to modest accommodations & reclaim this
land & redistribute it to the poor free of cost.
xiv. Give these lands on lease, free of cost to Educational Institutes who under take
to impart quality Professional Education at affordable rates to the Citizens.
xv. In Cantonments, allot surplus lands to Professional Institutes on lease, free of
cost & reserve 100 % of the seats in these colleges for Children of army men.
xvi. Declare all Agricultural lands within 5-20 kilometers of cities (depending on their population) as freely convertible to Residential Commercial uses. In addition to this all Agricultural lands on both sides of major roads within say two kilometers to five kilometers(depending on the width of the Major road/highway)should also be declared as freely convertible& Reasonable Restrictions may be put which are easily affordable Otherwise what will additionally happen is what has already happened i.e. the majority have turned in to thieves by breaking the unaffordable & unreasonable restrictions put on User of Land.
xvii. In keeping with the Socialistic Character of Indian Constitution, it is imperative
that the following steps are taken at once & needed Law passed:-
1. Shift the President of India to a more modest accommodation & either sell the real Estate of Rashtrapati Bhavan & use the money to provide Houses to the needy in Delhi or to settle the needy right on its site.
2. Restrict the Ministers of the Union & the States to Bungalows of maximum 2000 Square meters.
3. Restrict the Prime Minister & Chief Ministers of the States to Bungalows of maximum 4000 Square meters.
4. Restrict the Members of Parliament & the Members of Legislative Assemblies to Bungalows of maximum 1000 square meters Or Multistory Flats of Maximum 500 Square meters floor area.
5. Restrict the I.A.S Officers & I.P.S officers to Bungalows of maximum 500 square meters Or Multistory Flats of Maximum 400 Square meters floor area.
6. Restrict the other Central & State Government Officers to Bungalows of maximum 350 square meters Or Multistory Flats of Maximum 300 Square meters floor area.
7. Use the saved lands for benefit of the poor.
I trust & hope that this letter of mine pinches your Conscience (& not the ego) (or conscience of whoever reads it in your office) & something meaningful is done for the needy & slum dwellers (If you think that they too are citizens of this so called socialist republic of India).
Thanking you
Yours Sincerely


(Robby Sharma)
865, Block –B, Panki Kanpur-208020. U.P.India
email- sharmarobby@hotmail.com -----phone-0-9235844258
Copy to:- the following for best use of the letter as they please:-
1. President of India at Rashtrapati Bhawan New Delhi.
2. Smt Sonia Gandhi, 10 Janpath New Delhi.
3. President of Bhartiya Janta Party, Ashoka road New Delhi.
4. Chief of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at their head quarters at Nagpur.
5. The Minister of Law Government of India, New Delhi.
6. To the
Thanking you
Yours Sincerely



(Robby Sharma) Note:- In case my letter dated 27-03-2006 has not reached you, please let me know so that a copy can be sent.