2.1L Mahadalit families to get homestead land

PATNA: The state revenue and land reforms department has identified over 2.10 lakh homeless Mahadalit families for the allotment of homestead land in the current financial year under the government's ambitious scheme.
Each of these Mahadalit families has to be given three dismils (a traditional land measurement system, 1 dismil equals 435 sqft) of homestead land - or an area of 1,305 square feet - under the Mahadalit Vikas Yojana (MVY), which the state government announced three years ago.
The Nitish government, in 2007, had floated the idea of Mahadalit caste segment among the 22 dalit caste groups in the state, implying that the former, comparatively, were far more underdeveloped than other dalit sections. Finally, after a lot of homework, the government designated 21 of the 22 dalit castes as Mahadalits, leaving out the 'Dusadh' or 'Paswan' caste group, which caused a huge flutter in both political and dalit sections.
Revenue and land reforms department principal secretary Chandragupta Ashok Vardhan said on Thursday that 12 lakh Mahadalit families were identified during a survey conducted three years ago.
Simultaneously, chunks of land from which the homestead land had to be provided to the homeless Mahadalit families were also identified, so that no delay occurred in the allotment of homestead land to them. "If we had conducted a separate survey for the identification of land, it would have taken one more year," Vardhan said, adding that of the 12 lakh Mahadalit families identified, 2.10 lakh were homeless.
According to him, homestead land has so far been allotted to 1.56 lakh Mahadalit families from four categories of land. To expedite the process of allotment from the category of ryoti land, the government has released Rs 32.86 crore for all the districts for the purchase of 'ryoti' land at the rate already fixed, Vardhan said.