Anantnag: The illegal construction on prohibited Agricultural land goes unabated in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district while the officials are acting as mute spectators with no official taking any action against them.

In the absence of administrative action, the “illegal” conversion of agricultural land goes unabated in the district.

Experts believe that with such kind of happenings, the state’s overall production of agricultural output has drastically come down by 20 to 30 percent in recent years.

Such acts as per the experts has made J&K a consumer state with its limited resources of production to meet the demand for food.

Experts fear that if the conversion of agricultural land continues to go unabated, there are apprehensions that in near future the state will have no local production of rice, maize and other agricultural products as a result of which state’s GDP and economy will be badly affected.

keeping in view of the such occurrences, the State government has utterly failed to bring any bill in the legislature to put a ban on construction on agricultural land.

Observers believe that the issue is serious as rapid urbanization, horizontal constructions, farmers growing more cash crops and increasing population are some of the reasons that have resulted in fast shrinking of the agricultural land in the valley.

 “It is an irony that the state government continues to ignore such a grave issue. There are some existing laws which bar use of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, but all such laws remain confined to papers only,” said a revenue official.

According to sources, land mafia in connivance with the government functionaries is involved in selling agriculture land for the establishment of residential colonies.

Peripheries of Sangam, Semthan, Bijbehara, Batengoo, Urhanhall, Wanpoh and other areas in the outskirts of  Anantnag town are being unabatedly converted into residential colonies

Tehsildar Bijbehara, Sajad Ahmad told Kashmir Vision that most illegal constructions took place during 2016 turmoil.

“Any illegal constriction which was going on following the 2016 unrest was stopped immediately and demolished as well,” he said, adding that they won’t allow any such activity in future as well.

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