The state Cabinet, which met after a long time on Friday, took several decisions including approving the historic new land policy aimed at putting an end to discretionary allotment of thousands of acres of land by the government to industrial and infrastructure projects.

The objective of the new policy, as a senior revenue official said, is to put a check on land grabbing under the guise of development and industrialisation by providing the required land.

The Cabinet also approved two Ordinances that will empower the government and its universities to ensure quality education in professional colleges and empower the technical teams to inspect the colleges to verify the infrastructure and faculty and take effective action against them.

Briefing mediapersons on the Cabinet decisions, information minister D.K. Aruna said the Cabinet had decided to hold a special Assembly Session to discuss the new comprehensive policy on spending funds under the SC and ST sub-plan that had been prepared by the sub-committee headed by Deputy CM Damodar Raja Narasimha.

Continuing its spree of recruitments in the government sector, the Cabinet accorded sanction for filling up 12,864 posts in various departments. Of these new posts, 7,180 are of teachers, 44 doctors, 44 engineers, 120 para-medical and 73 are other gazetted posts besides 235 non gazette and class IV employees. As many as 5,168 posts will be filled through outsourcing.

The government also authorised the Hyderabad Metro Water authorities to raise loans of Rs 1,000 crore and Rs 1,500 crore for the Godavari Water Scheme and Krishna phase-III. The Cabinet also approved raising of Rs 4,000 crore by sale of bonds through the Power Finance Corporation.

The Cabinet approved guidelines for extending interest free loans to women self-help group members. Each member would be provided loans of up to Rs 5 lakh in both rural and urban areas.

Members who have availed loans will get a rebate in interest of up to Rs 3,000 every month if they repay the loan on time, the minister said.

90-day cap put on land allotment

The state government has fixed a deadline of 90 days for itself to either approve or reject the request for allotment of land for different purposes including industrial and infrastructure projects.

The new land policy, a brainchild of Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, which was approved by the state Cabinet here on Friday, makes it mandatory for departments to send proposals for land allotment to the authorities concerned within 30 days from receiving the request.

An all-powerful AP Land Management Authority (APLMA) will be set up with the Chief Commissioner of Land Administration as chairman and principal secretaries and secretaries of about a dozen departments as members to go through and vet these proposals.

The authority will have to clear the proposal enabling the government to make the allotments. This process should be completed within 60 days from receiving the request from the respective departments.

For the first time, the state government has come out with a policy that will assess the optimum requirement of land for each project and make the allotment accordingly. The APLMA will also have power to review the allotments based on the progress of the project. The land will be resumed if it is misused.

“The Cabinet recognised the need for judicious allotment of land which is increasingly becoming scarce,” information minister D.K. Aruna told mediapersons. The new policy will bring in uniformity in land allotment and remove indiscriminate gifting of government lands, she said.

Under the new land policy, the government will levy 10 per cent of the prevailing market rate as lease rental every year. As different governments lease lands for different upper limit of lease period, the government has decided to allow lease of land up to a maximum of 33 years.