Kathmandu, October 5
Prime Minister Balen Shah has criticised the Nepali Congress, saying that although the party promised in its 1959 election manifesto to distribute land to landless farmers, the problem remains unresolved even after seven decades.
In a Facebook post on Monday evening, Shah said successive governments had spent significant state resources trying to address the landlessness problem, but had failed to deliver the expected results.
“The Nepali Congress, then the country’s largest political party, had written in its manifesto for the 1959 parliamentary election that land obtained by clearing forests or fallow land, as well as surplus land resulting from the determination of a maximum landholding limit, would be distributed with priority to landless farmers,” Shah said.
“Since then, the country has gone through different political systems. There have been Panchayat governments, multiparty democracy, republican governments, majority governments, two-thirds majority governments and coalition governments. Yet a problem mentioned in a political manifesto seven decades ago remains one of the country’s major national issues that needs to be resolved.”
Shah said political parties had continued to seek votes for decades by promising to resolve the problem and provide land ownership certificates, but the situation remained largely unchanged.
He said previous governments had established various commissions and structures in the name of resolving land-related problems, resulting in substantial expenditure of state resources.
“More than Rs 2 billion appears to have been spent on such structures between 2020 and last year alone. But the expected results were not achieved in proportion to the expenditure,” he said. “The structures that were supposed to solve the problem themselves became obstacles to solving it.”
Shah said his government had changed the approach in line with its pre-election commitment and had started working on the issue through a different model.
“Instead of political distribution and unnecessary layers, we have chosen a path based on expertise, coordination with local governments and clear responsibilities,” he said. “We are trying to make the process streamlined, transparent and less burdensome for the state.”
Shah said that after the formation of the Land Problem Resolution Committee, data from across the country was being collected and processed through an integrated system.
“So far, 1,311,197 applications have been entered into the system. The process of reviewing and verifying these applications has already begun, and we are now moving towards prioritisation and resolution,” he said.
According to Shah, 5,737 families have received land ownership registration certificates since the current government came to power.
“Land ownership registration certificates have already been distributed to 5,737 families across different districts, including landless people without certificates, landless Dalits, landless squatters and people living in unplanned settlements,” he said. “This is only the beginning. We have now entered a phase of rapidly expanding this work across the country.”
He said the government had also begun the process of relocating landless squatters living in public-interest areas and high-risk locations to safer places.
For families displaced from the Kathmandu Valley, the government has started the process of managing land in their respective permanent home districts, Shah said.
He added that the government had begun the process of verifying records and taking legal action against people who falsely claimed to be landless.
Shah said the government was also moving to amend the Land Act, Forest Act and other relevant laws to accelerate the process.
“Legal, procedural and structural obstacles that are preventing solutions are being changed as necessary to open the way for resolution,” he said.
Shah said the government had made a clear election pledge to resolve the problem of landless squatters within 1,000 days and that the commitment had been adopted as a specific performance target of the Rastriya Swatantra Party-led government.
He said the government was working towards resolving the problem district by district and eventually declaring districts free of the landless squatter problem.
“After seven decades of promises, citizens will now receive land ownership certificates,” Shah said. “We are working towards that.”
