Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

This is with reference to your heavily advertised claim that you do not make promises, you only keep promises. You have referred to the promises made in the National Common Minimum Programme (CMP) and the fulfillment of those during your stewardship of the country in the last four years. I must confess that I am unable to share your elation. In a country where the bulk of the population depends on agriculture and land is still the largest single means of sustenance, the area of darkness which eclipses your government’s achievements is your complete silence regarding the promise made in the common minimum programme — that “revenue administration will be thoroughly modernised and clear land titles will be established”. A new record-of-rights, for rural and urban areas was to be prepared based on the new survey and state-guaranteed titles to land were to replace the present record-of-rights, in which such ‘title’ is only presumptive.

Even before it was included in the UPA government’s CMP, the Congress had identified in its 2003 Shimla Sankalp, “the acceleration of the implementation of land reforms and the initiation of reforms in land laws and record-of-rights to enable the conversion from the present system of presumptive titles to conclusive titles guaranteed by the state” as one of the core priorities “in keeping with its beacon Congress ka hath, garib ke sath”. This was followed by a letter from Sonia Gandhi to all Congress chief ministers asking them to place this on top of their governance agenda.

... contd.