Greater Noida starts buying land from farmers

GREATER NOIDA: Running short of industrial plots, the Greater Noida Authority has initiated the process of buying land from farmers in half-a-dozen villages directly. The Authority has to add 630 hectares of land by 2021 to meet the goals for industrial development in the city as per its master plan.
Officials said that interested sellers from villages, including Imaliyaka, Sirsa and Amarpur, have already forwarded their documents online to the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA), and that the rates are being negotiated.

“We can get the required land for developing industries in two ways. Either we can buy the land directly from farmers or we can ask Gautam Budh Nagar district administration to acquire the land and hand it over to us,” said KK Gupta, additional CEO of GNIDA. Since acquisition is a long-drawn process, the Authority prefers to buy the land directly from the owners.
In fact, the process was initiated in November last year, following a board meeting and direct purchase from farmers through mutual consent was pushed as the first option. Since then, the Authority has managed to source around 300 hectares of land. “Due to the lockdown, the process was shelved. Response and application from interested farmers is being sought over the portal now,” said Gupta.
Moreover, due to the dismal response, GNIDA officials would conduct camps within the villages that had been notified in 2006, but are yet to be developed, in order to increase its industrial land bank to 4,201 hectares as per the master plan by the end of March 2021.
More than 300 villages have been notified under GNIDA by the state government. But so far, the development work has taken place in 200 odd villages. The villages where purchase or acquisition of land has been planned include Dhoom Manikpur, Sunpura, Imaliyaka, Sirsa, Amarpur and Itahi. “Majority of the land that is yet to be acquired falls close to the Eastern Peripheral Expressway in Dankaur,” said Devendra Bhati from Ghangola village.
Additional district magistrate (land acquisition) Balram Singh said, “We received the proposal of the Authority in the past, and are working on the matter. Interaction with farmers and land owners of the notified villages is scheduled next month and we would forward our report to senior authorities.”