Nature & Scope of Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Land Holding Act, 1947

Abstract

The Bombay Prevention of the Fragmentation and Consolidation of Land Holdings Act, 1947 was enacted by the legislature at the initial stages of independent India to prevent the fragmentation of agricultural land holdings and to provide for the consolidation of agricultural land holdings for the purpose of the better cultivation.

The Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation Act, 1947 provides for State intervention for consolidation of fragments irrespective of the willingness of the people. This act also provides various incentives for co-operation such as wavering of consolidation fee charged by the government and granting of loans to agriculturists whose lands have been consolidated. The East Punjab Holdings Act 1948 empowered the Punjab Government to take up consolidation in any area either on the request of the holders of an area or, on its own initiative. The Bihar Consolidation of Holdings and Prevention of Fragmentation Act 1956, prohibits the creation of future fragments, a certain minimum area necessary for profitable cultivation to be defined as a standard minimum area and all holdings below that size to be treated as fragments.

An immediate reason for the overall patterns of land fragmentation in rural India is the prevalence of the Zamindari system in many of the river valleys. The Zamindari system was characterized by highly inequitable pattern of land holdings with very few landowners holding onto most of the cultivatable land. To correct this inequitable pattern of land holding, the Indian Constitution (enacted in 1949), granted powers to different states to enact land redistribution measures.

These efforts were supplemented in the early 1970s by the enactment of Land Ceiling Acts, which placed upper limits on land holdings and required the surplus land to be redistributed among the landless. This process along with the fragmentation through acts of succession from one generation to the next has reduced size of land holdings and led to fragmentation of land holdings of farmers

Keywords: fragmentation, Consolidation of Land