NEW DELHI: With Delhi Development Authority taking over nearly 13,000 acres of gram sabha land and over Rs 960 crore of funds deposited in the accounts of urbanised villages, the residents have urged that the land and the money be utilised to boost infrastructure of such areas.
Paras Tyagi of Centre for Youth, Culture, Law and Environment (CYCLE), an organisation working for public policy reforms in Delhi’s complex governance model with a special focus on villages, claimed that DDA commercially exploited the gram sabha land of villages in the past and the mistake shouldn’t be repeated.
“Our analysis shows that the gram sabha land of villages was sold by DDA at huge price for residential, commercial and institutional purposes. The villages of Budhela, Peeragarhi and Nasirpur, which were urbanised at different points of time by DDA, are classic examples of this,” said Tyagi.
“Since LG VK Saxena is visiting various rural and urbanised villages and talking about their redevelopment and using the gram sabha land for the village welfare, we urge him to ensure that the money and the land are used to boost village infrastructure,” he added.
Vivek Yadav of Ghazipur village said even the ponds and grazing grounds for cattle were sold as commercial plots by DDA to both government as well as private players. “This is how DDA’s coffers swelled. But the residents of urbanised villages continue to live in pitiable conditions – narrow lanes, no parks, no place to park vehicles and no recreational facilities,” Yadav claimed.
A Raj Niwas official said the LG was going to chair a review meeting of ‘Delhi Gramoday Abhiyan’ on January 2. “This issue seems to be very close to the residents of both rural and urbanised villages. We will definitely take it up with DDA,” the official said.
Saxena recently launched ‘Dilli Gramodaya Abhiyan’ to give a major infra boost to the city’s urbanised villages, upgrade the landscape and bring civic services at par with other parts of the capital.
According to officials, the urban development department of the Delhi government notified 89 city villages as ‘urbanised’ under the Delhi Development Act in January 2019. Another set of 79 villages were notified as ‘urban’ in September 2020. With urbanisation, the entire revenue estate of these villages was placed at the disposal of DDA on “as it where is” basis.
