Wildlife and Nature Conservation - Centre for Ecological Sciences

the State. The landowners in their individual lands have permanent and heritabletransferable rights over the land and its use. Land ceiling has been imposed wherein amaximum of five ha of irrigated land can be owned by a family of five members and foreach additional member of the family 1/2 ha may be owned. The ceiling is 10 ha, in caseof non-irrigated land. This Act also prohibits transfer of tribal land to a non-tribal andland rights are thus acquired by (1) inheritance (2) transfer (3) allotment of new land byGovernment. Transfer of land owned by tribal to a non-tribal may be possible only afterpermission from the Deputy Commissioner and consent of the District council. However,M.L.R. & L.R. Act, 1960 does not apply to hill areas where 70% of the forests arelocated. The land tenure system in these hill villages is governed by the customs andtraditions of the tribes that inhabit such areas and these are basically of two broad typesviz. Naga and Kuki. However, there is one common factor, that the rights over land canbe acquired by clearing jungles, in addition to acquisition through inheritance andtransfer.In Meghalaya, 72.98% of the land of the State falls under community ownership. Thisalso includes clan land and “rikynti” land, which are not strictly community land. Therest consist of land acquired by the Government for its establishment and land assessedfor land revenue, which includes towns, bazaar land, homestead land, basti or paddylands, etc. The land tenure system is different from district to district and each of the predominanttribal community follows its own traditional system. In the Khasi Hills, onecategory of land belongs to the community, and even if a member has a right to occupy aportion of the land, he has no transferable right. In the second category, land is set apartexclusively for certain clans, specially the original founders of villages. Such clans enjoyabsolute right of occupancy of the land as well as heritable and transferable rights. In theJantia hills, the Government did not recognise private ownership of high lands, butallowed anyone to cultivate them.In the Garo hills, there are two types of land tenure systems. In one category i.e. “akhing”land, the individual families have only temporary right for cultivation. In the othercategory, which are basically lands in the plains, permanent cultivation is allowed. Allthese lands are assessed for land revenue, the rate of which is fixed either permanently ortemporarily for a period.In Mizoram, about 51% of the forests are unclassified and 11% of the forest area iscontrolled by the District Council. Most of the unclassified forests are owned by theVillage Councils. Parts of these forests are kept as village safety and supply reserves andin rest of the areas of forests, Jhuming is extensively practised. No systematic survey anddemarcation has so far been carried out in Mizoram. By and large almost the entire forestareas have been affected in the past by Jhuming; resulting in clearance of primary treecover and .leading to degradation of land, except in the southeastern part of the Lungleidistrict and southern parts of Chhimtuipui district. Land rights accrue on permanentoccupancy of either agricultural or residential areas, especially in wet rice cultivation,terraced rice cultivation and fruit plantation in permanent plots. The Jhumias do not havesuch rights. The jhum lands being property of village community, the ownership of suchland is shared amongst the community. The ownership during the period of cultivation isdecided by a lottery once in a year.150