Business Standard / Dehra Dun April 14, 2007
Declaring that it would not allow the repeat of any Nandigram-like episode in Uttarakhand, the state government today announced that it would shortly bring a separate agriculture policy with an aim to protect the rapidly shrinking agri-land and provide special sops to farmers.
Faced with an alarming rise in agriculture land being given for industrial use and special economic zones, Agriculture Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said the government would protect agriculture land falling in the hands of land mafia and builders.
The latest government figures showed that the pattern of land use of nearly 24,000 hectares of agriculture land had changed in the past seven years. [source]
