Pauri District Magistrate Sushil Kumar asked the villagers of Panchur, the village in Yamkeshwar block — the native place of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adtiyanath — to send proposals for land consolidation while taking a meeting there on Tuesday.
Sounding worried over agricultural lands remaining unused with the exodus of the villagers, DM said that the focus would be trained on traditional agriculture and animal husbandry. He said that with different villages of the district being rich with regional crops, there is no reason why the process of migration cannot be reversed. “It is really alarming and saddening too that the migration is maximum in the district. The district tops too in the matter of the volume of unfertile land. We are trying our best to develop the villages while using the welfare schemes of the Centre and the state government. While we are focusing on the local products the farmers are being motivated to go for land consolidation and to use higher technologies to boost agricultural production,” DM said.
Dwelling more on land consolidation, he said that the people are still confused over it. “We want to assure them that land consolidation if executed would save the agricultual land from turning unfertile through prolonged disuse. However, the administration would not force them to adopt land consolidation. They would do it on their own, volountrily. Things have started and the village Panchur is the fourth village we are approaching for the purpose,” he said.
The father of CM Yogi, Anand Singh Bisht and his brother Mahendra Singh Bisht dwelt on the advantages of the land consolidation while urging the villagers to voluntarily avail land consolidation for greater returns and prosperity. Block pramukh Krishna Negi, deputy gram pradhan Manendra singh, chief development officer Vijay Jogdande, SDM Kotdwar Rakesh Tewari and chief Agriculture officer Devendra Singh Rana were among those present.